THE  LIBRARY- 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


Why   Europe   is   at 
War 

The  Question  Considered 

From  the  Points  of  View  of 

France,    England,    Germany,   Japan,    and 
The  United  States 


By 

Frederic   R.  Coudert— Frederick  W.  Whitridge 

Edmund  von  Mach — Toyokichi  lyenaga 

Francis  Vinton  Greene 


With  Portraits 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and   London 

Gbe  fmfcfcerbocfcer  Press 

1915 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 

BY 
G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 


"Che  fmfcfcerbocfcer  press,  flew  Korh 


PUBLISHERS'  NOTE. 

THE  Addresses  presented  in  the  following  volume 
were  delivered  in  Buffalo  on  the  seventh  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1915,  and  the  interest  expressed  in  them  by 
the  very  large  audience  that  was  present  and  by 
the  press  of  Buffalo  and  elsewhere  was  evidence 
that  the  speakers,  all  representative  men,  had  made 
noteworthy  contributions  to  the  analysis  of  the 
war  conditions  in  Europe  and  that  their  utterances 
were  deserving  of  preservation  in  book  form. 
Papers  of  this  kind,  presented  by  writers  who  have 
authoritative  knowledge  of  the  subject-matter  and 
who  are  keenly  interested  in  the  result  of  a  pend- 
ing contest,  belong  to  what  may  be  called  con- 
temporary history,  and  while  of  immediate  service 
for  the  readers  of  to-day,  possess  importance  also 
for  later  generations. 

NEW  YORK, 
March  ji,  191$. 


Hi 

2041819 


FOREWORD 

IN  bringing  this  book  to  the  attention  of  the 
public,  it  is  proper  to  mention  that  the  right,  title, 
and  interest  in  the  contract,  vested  in  myself  as 
editor,  have  been  assigned  to  The  Charity  Organi- 
zation Society  of  Buffalo.  It  is  the  purpose  that 
whatever  proceeds  may  be  secured  from  this 
volume,  which  presents  the  issues  of  the  European 
War,  shall  go  to  the  benefit  of  the  unemployed 
poor  of  the  city  of  Buffalo  who  are  innocent  and 
indirect  victims  of  this  war.  I  desire  to  make 
acknowledgment  further  to  my  friend,  Major 
George  Haven  Putnam,  of  the  historic  publishing 
house  of  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  now  in  the  eighty- 
third  year  of  its  useful  activities  in  the  field  of 
letters,  for  the  suggestion  of  utilizing  for  book 
publication  the  material  of  these  noteworthy 
addresses. 

The  meeting  at  which  these  addresses  were 
delivered  had  its  origin,  like  so  many  other  things 
in  life,  in  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  chance  or 
accident.  I  happened  to  be  in  New  York  for  the 


vi  Foreword 

purpose  of  seeing  some  people,  who  could  not  come 
to  Buffalo,  on  a  commercial  matter  connected  with 
the  business  in  which  I  earn  my  living.  I  had  just 
received  the  notice  of  the  "Non-Partisan  Discus- 
sions" which  at  this  season,  for  several  years,  the 
Republican  Club  has  been  in  the  habit  of  conduct- 
ing on  Saturday  afternoons;  and  I  decided  to  take 
the  opportunity  to  hear  one  of  them.  The  subject 
for  this  particular  Saturday — January  i6th — was 
THE  GREAT  WAR,  and  the  speakers  were  Chancellor 
MacCracken,  Dr.  lyenaga,  Dr.  Dernburg,  Rev.  Dr. 
Holmes,  and  Rev.  .Dr.  Carter.  I  confess  to  dis- 
appointment in  Dr.  Dernburg,  of  whose  writings 
I  had  read  a  great  deal.  He  proved  to  be — what 
Marc  Antony  untruthfully  described  himself — 
no  orator.  Not  so  with  Dr.  lyenaga,  the  speaker 
who  preceded  him;  who,  speaking  in  a  clear  and 
resonant  voice,  without  manuscript  or  notes  of 
any  kind,  never  lacking  or  hesitating  for  the  exact 
word,  held  his  audience  for  more  than  forty-five 
minutes  literally  spellbound  in  wonder  and  as- 
tonishment at,  and  admiration  for,  so  unusual  a 
performance. 

I  determined  at  once  that  I  would  if  possible 
have  a  similar  discussion  in  Buffalo,  and  through 
the  liberality  and  harmonious  co-operation  of 
press  and  public,  committees  and  proprietors,  the 


Foreword  vii 

meeting  was  held  with  conspicuous  success.  It 
was  an  intensely  dramatic  occasion:  A  beautiful 
playhouse,  a  brilliant  audience  filling  every  seat 
except  the  farther  reaches  of  the  upper  galleries, 
and  on  the  stage  chosen  and  fitting  representatives 
of  the  Latin,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  the  Teuton,  and 
the  Japanese  races,  four  out  of  the  five  races  which 
rule  the  world — explaining,  in  characteristic  racial 
fashion,  what  each  nation  was  fighting  for — and 
three  of  these  races  fighting  for  their  very  lives  as 
independent  nations.  The  speakers— except  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  who  was  characteristically  unimpas- 
sioned — were  stirred  with  a  genuine  passion  which 
even  the  greatest  of  play-actors  cannot  simulate, 
as  they,  speaking  without  notes  of  any  kind, 
walking  up  and  down  the  stage  and  gesticulating 
with  vehemence,  recited  the  wrongs  which  they 
had  suffered  and  gave  vent  to  the  hatred  which 
the  acts  of  their  foes  had  excited.  We  knew  that 
Mr.  Coudert  could  hold  the  attention  of  the 
Justices  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  for 
four  and  five  hours  at  a  stretch,  but  none  of  us 
had  before  realized  the  dramatic  possibilities  of  his 
mobile  face  with  its  flashing  eyes  and  facile  mouth ; 
we  knew  that  Dr.  von  Mach  was  no  disciple  of 
Treitschke  and  Nietzsche,  no  admirer  of  Bern- 
hardi,  but  we  had  not  appreciated  how  pro- 


viii  Foreword 

foundly  he  could  be  stirred,  as — one  against  three 
— he  defended  his  Vaterland  against  the  charges 
put  forth  by  his  opponents;  we  knew  that  all 
things  are  possible  to  the  modern  highly  educated 
Japanese  gentleman,  but  those  who  for  the  first 
time  heard  Dr.  lyenaga  were  simply  astounded 
at  his  knowledge  of  the  English  idiom,  his  keen 
satire,  his  biting  sarcasm,  and  the  lofty  enthusiasm 
with  which  he  declared  that  if  the  soldiers  of  his 
race  came  to  France  in  this  war  they  would  come 
only  because  their  word  was  pledged  and  their 
ally  claimed  them;  and  they  would  come  "not  as 
hirelings,  not  as  the  Hessians  came  to  this  country 
one  hundred  and  forty  years  ago." 

It  was  my  pleasing  duty  to  preside  at  this 
unique  meeting.  I  submitted  in  advance  to  each 
speaker  a  typewritten  draft  of  what  I  intended  to 
say — speaking  from  memory — in  introducing  him. 
Each  gave  his  unqualified  and  even  grateful  ap- 
proval. Such  efforts  gain  success  under  the  glamour 
of  the  occasion,  spoken  at  a  late  hour  of  the  night, 
in  the  environment  of  an  audience  whose  enthusi- 
asm is  worked  up  to  the  highest  pitch  by  the 
emotions  of  the  moment.  In  the  cold  grey  dawn, 
and  the  still  colder  type,  of  to-morrow  and  the 
day  after,  they  are  as  garish  as  the  paint  and  tinsel 
of  the  stage  itself  when  exposed  to  sunlight. 


Foreword  ix 

They  will  not  be  reproduced  here.  But  some 
extracts  from  them  seem  to  be  necessary  if  the 
"atmosphere"  of  the  speakers  is  to  be  faithfully 
reproduced.  I  spoke  of  France,  as  "the  land 
where  the  Arts  and  Sciences  have  reached  the 
highest  development  ever  known  to  man ;  the  land 
to  whose  beautiful  fields  and  splendid  capital 
people  flock  each  year  from  every  quarter  of  the 
globe ;  whose  people  in  this  titanic  war  have  shown 
those  qualities  of  grim  determination  and  calm 
but  intense  energy  which  we  in  our  conceit  have 
been  wont  to  characterize  as  attributes  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  or  Teutonic  races." 

Of  England — being  myself  of  unmixed  New 
England  and  Old  England  ancestry — I  could  only 
say:  "Hove  England;  Hove  London,  with  its  fog 
and  its  grime,  its  Abbey  and  its  Tower,  its  tubes 
and  its  busses." 

We  Americans  can  well  feel  pride  at  the  sturdy 
and  hopeful  courage  with  which  our  British  cous- 
ins— a  peace-loving  people — absolutely  unpre- 
pared for  the  storm  which  has  so  suddenly  burst 
upon  them — having  much  to  risk  and  nothing  to 
gain  from  war — have  accepted  their  responsibilities 
for  the  fulfilment  of  their  obligations  to  Belgium 
and  to  France  and  for  the  defence  of  their  empire, 
and,  under  the  fierce  training  of  actual  warfare,  are 


x  Foreword 

creating  an  army  of  citizens.  I  do  not  undertake 
to  say  that  in  this  most  colossal  of  all  wars  Eng- 
land is  right;  while  I  am  certainly  unwilling  to 
take  the  ground  that  her  decision  for  war  was 
wrong,  and  that  there  was  any  other  way  open  for 
her  in  which  she  could  have  maintained  her  honour 
and  have  fulfilled  her  responsibilities. 

In  a  controversy  of  such  phenomenal  and  un- 
precedented magnitude  I  do  not  presume  to  pass 
judgment  on  any  of  the  nations.  I  leave  that 
where  it  belongs,  with  Almighty  God. 

Of  Germany:  "Now,  where  will  you  find  greater 
efficiency  than  in  Germany?  Did  Alexander  or 
Caesar  or  Frederick  or  Napoleon  have  a  finer 
army  than  that  which  the  Kaiser  now  commands? 

"Whatever  may  be  the  judgment  of  Americans 
as  to  the  causes  of  the  war  or  as  to  the  aims  of  the 
several  nations  who  are  taking  part  in  the  contest, 
I  do  not  see  how  any  man  with  red  blood  in  his 
veins  can  fail  to  give  his  meed  of  admiration  to  the 
German  people  which,  with  a  magnificent  organiza- 
tion and  with  the  highest  devotion  on  the  part 
of  the  men  in  the  ranks,  has  undertaken  a  struggle 
against  such  a  great  group  of  opponents,  a  struggle 
in  which  during  the  past  six  months  more  men  have 
been  killed  than  in  six  years  of  previous  warfare. 
In  expressing  our  appreciation  of  the  fighting 


Foreword  xi 

qualities  of  the  soldiers  of  Germany  we  are  not  to 
forget  the  patriotic  devotion  and  courage  shown 
by  the  men  of  little  Belgium,  ally  of  France  and  of 
England,  in  the  apparently  hopeless  attempt  to 
defend  their  soil  and  to  maintain  their  liberties 
against  the  overwhelming  onslaught  of  the  Ger- 
man invaders." 

Of  Japan:  "We — United  States — brought  Ja- 
pan, somewhat  unwilling,  into  the  family  of 
nations,  when  Perry,  first  with  his  fleet  and  his 
guns  but  without  firing  a  shot,  opened  her  gates; 
and  then  with  his  treaty  of  March  31,  1854, 
formally  presented  this  shy  people  to  the  society 
of  Europe  and  America.  But  in  these  sixty-one 
years  what  a  change!  What  a  record  of  accom- 
plishment! The  venerable  traditions  of  Japan, 
with  her  high  civilization  antedating  that  of  Caesar 
Augustus  and  coeval  with  that  of  Pericles,  her 
exquisite  art  and  her  wonderful  literature,  are  still 
her  own.  But  in  mechanics,  in  shipping,  in  com- 
merce, in  industry,  Japan  is  now  rival  to  all  the 
foremost  in  the  world.  Ay,  a  virile  race  that, 
though  small  in  stature;  capable  of  self-denial,  of 
discipline,  of  devotion  to  a  cause,  absolutely  unsur- 
passed if  not  unrivalled.  In  war,  Japan  has  in 
succession  defeated  the  two  most  populous  nations 
of  the  world  and  has  won  at  Tshushima  a  naval 


xii  Foreword 

victory  which  outclasses  every  battle  on  the  sea 
from  Salamis  to  Trafalgar  and  Manila  Bay.  In 
peace  her  people  are  gentle,  industrious,  polite, 
courteous  to  a  fault,  but  proud  and  sensitive  like 
all  high-bred  people." 

I  endeavoured  to  convey  some  idea  of  the  per- 
sonality of  the  speakers,  two  of  whom  were  life- 
long friends,  and  one  of  them  a  friend  of  recent 
acquaintance,  but  none  the  less  highly  esteemed, 
by  speaking  of  Mr.  COUDERT  "as  a  great  inter- 
national lawyer,  whose  grandfather  was  wounded 
at  Leipsic ;  whose  father  was  the  friend  and  adviser 
of  President  Cleveland,  as  he  is  himself  the  friend 
and  adviser  of  President  Wilson;  who  at  the  age 
of  twenty-eight  conducted  as  senior  counsel,  with 
John  G.  Carlisle,  a  contemporary  of  his  honoured 
father,  as  junior  counsel,  those  great  Insular  Cases 
in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  the 
arguments  of  which  fill  an  entire  volume  (Reports, 
United  States  182),  the  decision  of  which  settled 
for  all  time  the  status  under  our  Constitution  of 
the  overseas  possessions  which  the  unexpected 
results  of  the  war  with  Spain  threw  upon  us. 

And  he  is  not  a  lawyer  only.  He  has  served  in 
the  only  war  in  which  his  country  has  been  en- 
gaged since  he  grew  to  manhood.  In  the  War  with 
Spain  he  commanded  Troop  A  of  the  New  York 


V 

Foreword  xiii 

Volunteers,  and  under  the  orders  of  General  Miles 
took  part  in  the  capture  of  Porto  Rico. 

"  Though  his  sympathies  are  with  France  in  this 
gigantic  struggle,  yet  he  is  above  all  an  Ameri- 
can citizen,  as  were  his  father  and  grandfather 
before  him;  for  his  grandfather,  after  being  in- 
volved in  a  plot  to  place  Napoleon's  son  on  the 
throne  of  France  in  place  of  Louis  XVIII.,  and 
being  condemned  to  be  shot  for  his  complicity  in 
this  conspiracy,  escaped  to  America  and  was  an 
ardent  citizen  of  these  United  States  ^for  the 
remaining  sixty  years  of  his  life." 

Of  Mr.  WHITRIDGE:  "An  American  citizen 
by  birth  as  well  as  by  affection,  a  distinguished 
lawyer,  a  man  of  large  affairs,  the  President  of  one 
of  the  great  traction  systems  in  New  York.  He 
also  has  an  office  in  London  as  well  as  in  New  York, 
a  summer  home  in  Scotland,  where  he  was  when 
the  war  broke  out.  His  son,  Arnold  Whitridge 
(named  after  his  grandfather,  Matthew  Arnold), 
is  an  undergraduate  in  an  American  university, 
but  he  now  holds  the  King's  commission  as  a 
Lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Artillery.  As  soon  as  the 
snow  melts  he  will  go  with  the  rest  of  Kitchener's 
men  to  join  his  comrades  in  the  trenches  in  an  effort 
to  put  an  end  to  this  terrible  war." 

Of  Dr.  VON  MACH:  "That  virile  race  is  repre- 


xiv  Foreword 

sented  here  to-night  by  a  worthy  scion — an  edu- 
cated gentleman,  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  once  a 
teacher  at  Harvard,  no  blusterer,  but  a  writer  of 
books  and  student  of  archeology,  calm,  temperate, 
thorough,  a  solid,  hardheaded  thinker,  with  a 
command  of  his  adopted  language,  similar  to  that 
which  his  great  countryman,  Carl  Schurz,  used 
to  display  to  the  astonishment  and  admiration  of 
all  his  hearers  and  readers. 

"His  kinsmen  are  on  the  firing  line,  fighting  for 
their  Vaterland,  and  he  will  tell — as  none  better 
can — what  they  are  fighting  for." 

Of  Dr.  IYENAGA:  "Her  representative  here 
to-night  is  typical  of  the  best  of  her  highly  edu- 
cated men.  Born  in  Japan,  educated  at  Oberlin, 
and  afterwards  at  Johns  Hopkins,  a  professor  of 
history  at  Chicago,  a  traveler  in  India,  a  diplomat 
in  Turkey  and  Persia,  he  is  an  honour  to  his  people. 
But  why  go  on  talking  about  him!  Let  me  ask 
only  one  question  which  may  serve  to  fix  his 
status  in  your  minds.  Is  there  one  among  the 
28,000,000  grown  men  in  this  country  who  can  go 
to  Tokio  and  make  in  the  Japanese  tongue  such 
an  address  as  you  are  going  to  listen  to  in  your  own 
language?" 

When  the  long-continued  applause  which 
followed  Dr.  lyenaga's  speech  had  finally  ceased, 


Foreword  xv 

I  turned  to  him  and  said:  "Now,  Dr.  lyenaga,  do 
you  understand  why  I  placed  you  last  in  the  list  of 
speakers?  I  called  time  on  every  other  speaker  at 
twenty-five  minutes,  and  each  of  them  finished 
within  four  minutes  more.  I  said  nothing  to  you, 
and  you  have  spoken  forty-eight  minutes."1 

The  proceedings  were  appropriately  terminated 
by  the  Rev.  Cameron  J.  Davis,  Rector  of  Trinity 
Church,  in  Buffalo,  who  read  the  appointed  prayer 
of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  for  peace, 
which  is  in  these  words: 

0  God,  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  our 
only  Saviour,  the  Prince  of  Peace,  give  to  the 
nations  across  the  sea  grace  seriously  to  lay  to 
heart  the  danger  they  and  we  are  in  by  the  unhappy 
conflicts  that  have  broken  out  among  them.  Give 
them  a  right  sense  of  the  responsibility  for,  and 
the  awful  horror  and  evil  of  war.  Make  them  to 
realize  that  with  Thee  is  power,  and  that  Thou  canst 
lift  up  or  cast  down  a  people  at  Thy  will.  May 
the  spirit  of  wisdom,  patience,  and  self-control  come 
to  the  counsels  of  those  with  whom  the  direction  of 
the  contending  navies  and  armies  rest.  May 
cruelty  be  banished  and  mercifulness  be  manifested 

1  As  here  printed  the  speeches  are  of  about  equal  length;  but 
in  order  to  keep  the  meeting  within  proper  limits  of  time  I  in- 
terrupted each  speaker  (except  Dr.  lyenaga)  at  the  end  of 
twenty-five  minutes.  It  was  understood  in  advance  that  in  re- 
vising the  stenographic  notes  of  his  address,  each  speaker  was 
at  liberty  to  add  to  it  up  to  approximately  10,000  words. 


xvi  Foreword 

one  toward  another,  amid  the  pains  and  wounds  of 
the  battlefield,  whether  friend  or  enemy  be  the 
sufferer  there.  Stay,  we  beseech  Thee,  the  pain  and 
the  misery,  the  sorrow  and  the  want,  the  fierceness 
and  the  enmity  which  now  desolate  the  earth. 
And  speedily,  if  it  be  Thy  will,  send  forth  upon  the 
nations  of  the  world  Thy  blessing  of  peace.  We  ask 
these  things  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  our  Saviour. 
Amen. 

Such  was  the  origin,  progress,  and  end  of  our 
meeting.  What  the  speakers  said  is  contained  in 
the  following  pages — addresses  I  to  4  inclusive. 
The  Epilogue  is  outside  of  my  original  plan  for 
the  Buffalo  meeting,  and  it  formed  no  part  of 
what  took  place  there.  It  has  been  written  within 
the  last  week,  and  it  is  printed  here  solely  because 
my  friend,  Major  Putnam,  asked  me  to  write  it, 
and  in  terms  of  such  insistence  that  his  request 
could  not  be  denied. 

FRANCIS  V.  GREENE. 
BUFFALO 
March  2Q,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

MM 

FOREWORD    .         .         ...         .  v 

WHAT  FRANCE  is  FIGHTING  FOR   ...        3 
BY  FREDERIC  R.  COUDERT 

WHAT  ENGLAND  is  FIGHTING  FOR    ...       57 
BY  FREDERICK  W.  WHITRIDGE 

WHAT  GERMANY  is  FIGHTING  FOR    ...       85 
BY  DR.  EDMUND  VON  MACH 

WHY  JAPAN  Is  IN  THIS  WAR  .         .         .         .113 
BY  DR.  TOYOKICHI  IYENAGA 

EPILOGUE     .         .         .         .  .         .     141 

THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


xvii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

FREDERIC  R.  COUDERT 3 

From  a  photograph  by  Bradley,  New  York. 

FREDERICK  W.  WHITRIDGE     ....       57 

Copyright,  1906  by  Marceau. 

DR.  EDMUND  VON  MACH         .         .         .         -85 

From  a  photograph  by  Marceau,  Boston. 

DR.  TOYOKICHI  IYENAGA        .         .         .         .115 

From  a  photograph  by  Kikuchi,  New  York. 

GEN.  FRANCIS  V.  GREENE      .         .         .         .141 

From  a  photograph  by  Garford,  New  York. 


WHAT  FRANCE  IS  FIGHTING  FOR 
By  FREDERIC  R.  COUDERT 


Photo  by  Bradley,  New  York 


WHAT  FRANCE  IS  FIGHTING  FOR 

I  CANNOT,  without  a  certain  sense  of  sadness, 
recall  the  last  meeting  in  your  hospitable  city  at 
which  I  was  present,  on  January  7,  1912.  The 
question  then  discussed  was  the  ratification  by 
the  Senate  of  the  proposed  arbitration  treaties 
with  France  and  Great  Britain.  Our  hopes  ran 
high  and  we  felt  that  we  were  on  the  verge  of 
an  era  of  peace  and  good  will  among  the  nations 
in  which  the  quiet  strivings  of  the  forum,  the 
appeals  to  reason  and  law  were  destined  to  take 
the  place  of  the  strident  sound  of  cannon  and  the 
arbitrament  of  the  machine  gun. 

At  that  meeting  we  were  dreaming  world  peace. 
At  the  present  moment  we  witness  world  war. 
Discomforted  and  almost  stunned  by  the  sudden- 
ness with  which  Europe  in  the  early  days  of  August 
plunged  headlong  into  conflict  over  matters  which 
seemed  so  readily  susceptible  of  adjustment,  the 
American  people  find  it  difficult  to  realize  how 
such  a  result  could  have  come  about.  Among  the 
most  civilized  portion  of  mankind  all  that  science 

3 


4  Why  France  is  at  War 

has  taught,  that  method  has  organized,  that  money 
can  purchase,  that  ability  can  devise  is  now  used 
not  to  aid  humanity  but  to  destroy  human  life 
and  property ;  even  the  common  inherited  treasures 
of  mankind,  cathedrals  and  public  edifices,  the 
slow  product  of  generations  of  artists,  thinkers, 
and  workers,  absolutely  impossible  of  reproduction, 
are  shattered  into  bits  by  the  ingenious  devices  of 
modern  ballistics.  The  scientific  acquisition  of 
thirty  years  is  thus  focused  upon  destroying  all 
that  is  most  precious  to  humanity  and  we  seem 
only  to  have  advanced  in  order  that  the  engines 
of  demolition  might  be  made  more  complete. 
Incalculable  as  are  the  losses,  physical  and  mate- 
rial, they  are  yet  outweighed  by  the  tremendous 
moral  retrogression  involved  in  unchaining  the 
primitive  passions  of  millions  of  men.  Com- 
placent dreams  of  "progress"  have  been  rudely 
shattered. 

Close  students  of  politics  and  history  have 
warned  us  of  the  approaching  and  inevitable 
struggle,  but  I  think  I  may  safely  say  that  the 
American  public  at  least  did  not  believe  it  pos- 
sible that  the  leading  nations  of  civilized  Europe 
should  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  and  without 
even  an  attempt  at  mediation  or  adjustment 
rush  at  each  other's  throats.  Buckle,  the  philo- 


Why  France  is  at  War  5 

sopher  and  historian,  whose  writings  were  so 
much  in  vogue  a  generation  ago,  contended  that 
war  was  due  to  ignorance  and  barbarity  and  pre- 
dicted that  the  growth  of  knowledge  and  science, 
improved  means  of  communication,  and  con- 
sequent interchange  of  opinion  between  the 
various  peoples  of  Europe  must  necessarily  bring 
about  general  peace. 

This  certainly  was  the  widely  accepted  view 
and  evidently  appeals  to  the  reason  of  men,  yet 
the  prophecy  has  failed  utterly  and  completely. 
Even  the  people  of  the  United  States,  supposedly 
the  most  pacific  of  nations,  found  themselves  at 
war  in  1898,  and  almost  continuously  ever  since 
.have  some  of  the  nations  of  Europe  been  engaged 
in  serious  conflict. 

That  we  Americans  should  seem  to  be  particu- 
larly interested  in  the  attitude  of  France  is  but 
natural  and  fitting.  In  the  darkest  days  of  Ameri- 
can history,  France  understood  what  America 
was  fighting  for  and  her  answer  came,  not  in  the 
form  of  mere  sympathetic  phrases,  but  in  the 
person  of  Lafayette  and  his  generous  comrades, 
followed  a  little  later  by  the  valiant  army  and 
navy  of  France  which  so  decisively  turned  the 
scale  in  favour  of  the  hard-pressed  revolutionists. 
No  real  American  can  forget  the  story  of  that 


6  Why  France  is  at  War 

dark  and  dreary  winter  at  Valley  Forge  when  even 
the  stoutest  hearts  were  despondent  and  Wash- 
ington in  the  midst  of  his  shivering,  half-clad, 
and  half-fed  followers  wrote : 

Unless  some  great  and  capital  change  takes  place 
the  army  must  be  inevitably  reduced  to  one  or  other 
of  three  things, — starve,  dissolve,  or  disperse. 

It  seemed  as  though  naught  save  a  miracle  could 
save  the  cause,  and  yet  the  miracle  happened,  and 
France, — herself  in  great  distress  and  on  the  verge 
of  bankruptcy, — throwing  to  the  winds  the  coun- 
sels of  prudence,  followed  the  impulse  of  that 
spontaneous  generosity  so  common  in  individuals, 
so  rare  in  nations. 

France  had  not  then  learned,  and  perhaps  never 
will  learn,  that  cold  common  sense  and  calculation 
may  well  be  thought  to  constitute  the  only  legiti- 
mate factors  in  directing  the  policy  of  a  nation, 
while  enthusiasm  in  the  cause  of  another  people 
which  is  waging  war  against  oppression  or  injus- 
tice, is  a  dangerous  element  in  national  politics. 
She,  however,  has  never  hesitated  to  make  the 
cause  of  humanity  her  own. 

Has  it  not  been  rightly  said  that  every  man  has 
two  countries — his  own  and  France?  Does  not 
this  epigrammatic  and  paradoxical  form  of  expres- 


Why  France  is  at  War  7 

•ion  recognize  the  truth  of  history  that  France 
has  struggled  and  suffered  more  than  any  other 
nation  in  the  cause  of  mankind? 

The  wars  of  the  Revolution  and  of  Napoleon, 
destructive  and  unnecessary  though  some  may 
have  been,  were  induced  mainly  by  an  enthusiasm 
for  the  rights  of  man  and  for  the  betterment  of 
humanity — that  same  feeling  which  agitated  the 
French  nation  in  its  struggle  against  ancient 
privilege  and  which  has  marked  the  destruction 
of  the  Bastile  as  the  birth  of  civil  liberty  on  the 
continent  of  Europe. 

Some  have  compared  the  wars  of  Napoleon  with 
what  they  now  believe  to  be  the  ruthless  and  ag- 
gressive war  of  Germany  and  Austria  for  commer- 
cial and  territorial  aggrandizement,  and  while  the 
personal  ambition  and  egotistic  love  of  glory  of  the 
great  conqueror  are  not  to  be  minimized,  we  must 
yet  remember  that  Napoleon  brought  with  him 
not  only  the  sword  but  the  great  Civil  Code  which 
has  since  his  time  so  largely  formed  the  basis  of 
European  private  rights,  consecrating  the  equality 
of  man  before  the  law;  that  he  carried  with  him 
those  ideas,  hopes,  and  aspirations  of  the  Revolu- 
tion which  made  a  return  to  the  old  regime  of 
divine  right  and  hereditary  governmental  privilege 
permanently  impossible  wherever  his  legions  had 


8  Why  France  is  at  War 

bivouacked.  "Napoleon,"  said  Metternich,  "was 
the  incarnation  of  the  Revolution." 

We,  in  America,  far  from  the  blinding  actuali- 
ties of  the  great  conflict,  have  earnestly  concerned 
ourselves  with  the  underlying  causes  and  sought 
to  locate  the  responsibility  for  this  greatest  of  all 
wars,  for  if  it  be  found  that  any  one  nation 
or  government  or  regime  is  responsible,  public 
opinion  must  adjudge  it  the  enemy  of  civilization 
and  seek  means  to  avoid  a  repetition  of  this  world 
disaster. 

One  of  our  difficulties  is  that  each  of  the  nations 
at  war  admits  the  major  premise,  that  war  itself 
is  a  wrong  and  an  evil.  No  one  is  willing  to  accept 
the  responsibility  for  the  first  blow  and  each  would 
seek  to  claim  that  its  adversary  was  to  blame. 
Thus  is  the  war  itself  denounced  by  all  and  thus 
do  the  parties  admit  that  it  would  have  been  un- 
necessary had  it  not  been  for  the  aggression  of  the 
other.  It  is,  therefore,  pertinent  and  timely  for 
us  to  inquire  what  each  nation  is  fighting  for  and 
this  question  may  naturally  divide  itself,  first, 
into  what  the  peoples  of  each  nation  believe  they 
are  fighting  for;  and,  second,  whether  their  belief 
is  based  upon  reality. 

It  seems  somewhat  strange  to  one  who  is  some- 
what familiar  with  the  French  people,  French  lit- 


Why  France  is  at  War  9 

erature  and  opinion  and  who  spent  the  first  six 
weeks  of  the  war  in  France,  that  any  one  should 
ask  what  France  is  fighting  for.  This  was  not 
asked  by  French  people.  It  was  instinctively 
felt  in  all  classes  that  the  nation  must  fight 
against  militant  and  unprovoked  aggression  in 
defence  of  those  things  which  men  hold  most  dear 
— the  home,  the  family,  and  the  soil.  That  was 
accepted  without  question.  For  a  Frenchman  to 
have  asked  such  a  question  of  another  would  have 
seemed  to  savour  of  imbecility.  Travelling  about 
and  seeing  many  soldiers,  men  of  all  classes  from 
members  of  the  Parliament  to  peasants,  and  asking 
them  why  they  were  going  to  war,  I  received  practi- 
cally the  same  answer.  Men  from  the  South  and 
men  from  the  North  replied  to  me  in  almost  the 
same  terms:  "Ah,  Monsieur!  II  le  fallait.  Ca  ne 
pouvait  durer"  (Oh,  sir!  It  could  last  no  longer. 
It  was  inevitable). 

It  is  extraordinary  how  universal  and  how  deep 
seated  was  the  conviction  that  like  an  impending 
but  furious  cataclysm  of  nature,  this  war  had 
fallen  on  a  reluctant  people.  The  French  accepted 
war  as  a  brave  and  stoical  man  would  accept  the 
fact  of  pestilence,  feeling  that  after  having  done 
what  he  could  to  avoid  it,  he  must  set  his  house 
in  order  and  endeavour  to  resist  its  ravage. 


io  Why  France  is  at  War 

As  the  historian  Green  has  somewhere  remarked, 
the  instinct  of  a  people  is  often  wiser  than  the 
statecraft  of  kings,  and  our  query  now  is,  whether 
the  deep-seated  conviction  of  the  people  that  they 
were  forced  by  circumstances  beyond  their  control 
to  fight  in  defence  of  all  that  they  held  dear  as 
against  ruthless  aggression  was  true.  Was  this 
conviction  merely  the  result  of  skilful  newspaper 
agitation?  Did  it  result  from  the  speeches  of 
noisy  demagogues,  or  did  the  French  peasant  and 
artisan  truly  gauge  the  result  of  forty-three  years 
of  relations  with  his  powerful  neighbour  to  the 
East?  I  believe  he  did.  I  believe  that  the  general 
feeling  of  the  American  public  that  France  was 
forced  to  fight  in  order  to  repel  German  attack — 
calculated,  inevitable,  and  prompted  by  a  desire 
to  crush  France  and  take  from  her  her  colonial 
possessions — will  also  be  the  judgment  of  posterity. 

An  examination  of  French  literature  and  of 
periodicals  for  many  years  back  indicate  that 
every  movement  in  Europe  for  peace  and  disar- 
mament has  been  championed,  if  not  initiated, 
by  France.  The  most  powerful  men  in  the  French 
Parliament  and  in  French  public  life  have  raised 
their  voices  in  favour  of  humanity  as  against  na- 
tional jealousy  and  racial  feeling.  It  was  only 
fourteen  months  before  the  war  that  the  most  in- 


Why  France  is  at  War  1 1 

fluential  orator  in  the  nation  nearly  succeeded  in 
defeating  the  three-year  law — a  law  intending  to 
keep  conscripts  with  the  colours  for  a  year  longer 
and  which  was  proposed  in  answer  to  the  German 
military  preparations  of  1913.  The  acclaim  which 
the  opposition  to  this  proposed  law  met  indicated 
that  a  great  part  of  the  French  population  were 
so  opposed  to  great  armament  that  they  were 
willing  to  imperil  the  national  safety,  in  their 
desire  to  avoid  it.  Fortunately  for  the  nation,  the 
orator  failed  and  the  prediction  of  his  adversaries 
that  this  measure  was  a  measure  of  necessary 
national  safety  was  verified  a  little  more  than 
a  year  later  when  German  troops  crossed  the 
frontier. 

In  order  to  understand  the  situation,  we  must 
go  back  to  the  war  of  1870  and  the  foundation  of 
the  German  Empire  and  from  that  date  on  we  must 
trace  briefly  for  forty-three  years  the  intercourse 
between  the  two  nations.  This  intercourse  will 
show,  not  a  condition  of  real  peace,  as  we  under- 
stand it,  but  a  long  continued  series  of  threats, 
menaces,  and  acts  of  aggression,  designed  to  keep 
France  in  constant  fear  of  Germany's  military 
power  and  to  retain  her  in  that  position  of  inferi- 
ority which  she  occupied  after  the  disastrous  war 
of  1870-71  Vannee  terrible.  These  years  constitute 


12  Why  France  is  at  War 

a  time  of  tension  such  as  few  nations  have  been 
subjected  to. 

Popular  opinion  had  it,  and  perhaps  still  has  it, 
that  the  war  of  '70  was  caused  by  France  or  at 
least  by  the  government  of  Napoleon  III.  His- 
toric revelations,  contained  in  documents  since 
published  and  in  the  statements  and  publications 
of  the  chief  participants  in  the  conflict,  have 
proved  that  Prussia,  under  the  headship  of  her 
great  diplomat  and  leader,  Prince  von  Bismarck, 
had  resolved  upon  war  with  France  as  a  method 
of  uniting  North  and  South  Germany  and  creating 
a  great  empire.  The  falsification  of  the  famous 
Ems  telegram,  distorting  the  correct  diplomatic 
interview  between  the  King  of  Prussia  and  the 
French  Ambassador  into  an  insult  to  the  French 
nation,  was  cynically  avowed  by  Bismarck  as  a 
diplomatic  stratagem  by  which  he  proposed  to 
shift  the  apparent  onus  of  the  war  on  France.  In 
this  he  was  completely  successful  and  France  was 
left  isolated,  in  a  conflict  for  which  she  was  ill- 
prepared  and  which  the  mass  of  her  people  did 
not  desire.  Beaten  and  humiliated,  she  was  forced 
to  sue  for  peace,  and,  in  addition  to  the  most  enor- 
mous war  indemnity  ever  exacted,  to  give  up  two 
of  her  fairest  provinces. 

In  insisting  upon  the   cession  of  Alsace  and 


Why  France  is  at  War  13 

Lorraine,  German  diplomacy  did  worse  than 
blunder:  it  committed  a  crime  against  morality, 
the  consequences  of  which  it  was  impossible  to 
avoid.  '  Two  millions  of  people,  the  mass  of 
them  under  French  rule  for  two  centuries,  per- 
meated with  the  French  civilization  and  culture, 
devotedly  attached  to  France,  were  rudely  torn 
from  her  by  military  force  and  placed  under  the 
iron  heel  of  military  domination.  Enlightened 
men  throughout  the  world  were  able  to  see  the 
injustice  of  this  procedure  and  the  hypocrisy  which 
alleged  racial  reasons  for  justifying  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  French  nationality  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Alsace-Lorraine. 

This  step  had  been  contemplated  by  Prussia 
when,  as  a  member  of  the  victorious  coalition 
against  Napoleon,  she  had,  through  her  great  min- 
ister Stein,  in  1815,  asked  that  the  eastern  frontier 
provinces  be  taken  from  France.  That  she  should 
have  failed  in  this  was  due  to  the  opposition  of 
France's  two  greatest  enemies,  Wellington  and 
Alexander  III.,  who,  prompted  by  an  enlightened 
policy,  realized  the  inexpediency  of  forcing  a 
highly  civilized  people  into  an  allegiance  abhorrent 
to  them.  Wellington  urged  his  objection  to  the 
demand  of  a  great  territorial  cession  from  France 
and  wisely  insisted 


14  Why  France  is  at  War 

that  it  will  defeat  the  object  which  the  allies  have 
held  out  to  themselves  in  the  present  and  preceding 
wars.1 

What  a  pity  for  the  world's  peace  that  fifty-six 
years  later,  Bismarck  could  not  have  shown  similar 
wisdom. 

The  Czar  Alexander,  a  man  of  broad  views  and 
of  large  and  generous  impulses,  rejected  the  Prus- 
sian claim  and  referred  "to  the  preference  of  the 
Alsatians  for  France"  and  said  "the  observance  of 
engagements  was  a  better  guaranty  than  fortresses."1 

Thus  in  1871  Prussian  diplomacy  finally  achieved 
what  it  failed  to  accomplish  in  1815.  Prussia  at 
last  had  her  wish  and  France  was  dismembered ; 
dismembered  so  scientifically  indeed  that  her 
frontier  was  left  open,  that  she  might  always 
remain  in  a  position  of  military  inferiority  to 
Germany — and  her  heart,  Paris,  be  susceptible 
of  rapid  and  ready  attack.  All  the  advantages 
of  her  natural  frontiers  were  taken  from  her  and 
she  was  placed  in  a  position  where,  save  for  the 
industry,  sobriety,  and  intelligence  of  her  people, 
she  would  have  remained  almost  in  vassalage  to 
the  war-loving  Teuton.  "War,"  said  Napoleon, 
"is  the  national  industry  of  Prussia." 

1  Life  and  Times  of  Stein,  Seeley,  vol.  iii.,  p.  336. 
1  Ibid.,  p.  346. 


Why  France  is  at  War  15 

The  eminent  scholar,  Dr.  von  Mach,  who  today 
speaks  for  his  country,  has  himself  stated  in  a 
recent  publication  in  explanation  and  defence  of 
the  taking  of  Alsace-Lorraine: 

The  people  of  Alsace  are  almost  entirely  of  Ger- 
man stock,  belonging  to  the  Alemannian  tribe, 
from  the  name  of  which  the  French  name  for  Ger- 
many, Allemagne,  is  derived. 

After  commenting  upon  the  fact  that  their 
native  speech  is  German,  he  says: 

In  spite  of  this  Bismarck  foresaw  that  France 
would  not  rest  while  she  could  hope  some  day  to 
regain  these  provinces.  The  very  peace,  therefore, 
which  concluded  the  Franco-Prussian  war  laid  the 
foundation  of  another  war  in  the  future.  This  was 
a  heavy  price  to  pay,  but  without  Alsace  and  Lor- 
raine the  South  German  States  felt  unable  to  join 
the  federation  of  the  German  Empire. 

It  is  evident  that  even  Prince  von  Bismarck  had 
scarce  the  same  confidence  and  belief  in  the  Ger- 
man characteristics  of  the  people  for  he  thought 
that  it  was 

to  be  expected  that  the  strong  French  elements 
which  will  survive  in  the  country  for  a  long  while 
will  induce  the  people  to  unite  with  France  in  the 
case  of  another  Franco-German  war. 


1 6  Why  France  is  at  War 

Thus  these  reluctant  provinces,  despite  the 
protest  of  their  population  represented  by  their 
deputies  at  the  Assembly  at  Bordeaux,  were  trans- 
ferred to  another  allegiance  on  the  ostensible 
ground  that  they  belonged  to  Germany,  although 
the  German  Empire,  to  which  they  were  now 
turned  over,  had  existed  but  a  few  months.  If 
one  thing  be  certain  it  is  that  they  never  had  any- 
thing in  common  with  Prussia,  by  whose  king 
they  have  ever  since  been  ruled. 

The  real  reason,  however,  of  the  seizure  was 
that  Germany  wished  so  to  weaken  France  that 
she  might  at  any  time  dispose  of  her  militarily. 
As  the  German  General  Staff  put  it:  "A  German 
Metz  means  a  pistol  on  the  temple  of  France." 
That  the  pistol  has  ever  since  been  held  in  threat- 
ening attitude  and  has  been  cocked  and  agitated 
vigorously  from  time  to  time  during  the  last  forty- 
three  years  is  matter  of  contemporary  history 
which  I  propose  very  briefly  to  sketch.  The  race 
theory  was  merely  designed  to  appease  scruples 
abroad  and  to  please  overwrought  imaginations 
at  home. 

I  wish  nevertheless  to  challenge  this  specious 
theoretical  pretext  upon  which  the  provinces  were 
taken  over  by  the  new  German  Empire — a  pretext 
evidently  intended  for  the  satisfaction  of  senti- 


Why  France  is  at  War  17 

mentalists  who  might  have  recoiled,  as  did  the 
Emperor  Alexander  and  the  Iron  Duke,  from 
placing  two  million  unwilling  citizens  in  subjec- 
tion to  a  power  for  which  they  had  declared  their 
abhorrence.  Even  Bismarck  a  few  years  before 
had  felt  compunction  at  the  suggestion  that  Alsace 
should  forcibly  be  transferred  to  Prussian  domi- 
nation, for  in  1867  he  had  said  to  Mr.  Beatty 
Kingston : 

Suppose  France  entirely  conquered  and  a  Prus- 
sian garrison  in  Paris,  what  are  we  to  do  with  our 
victory.  We  could  not  even  decently  take  Alsace, 
for  the  Alsatians  have  become  Frenchmen  and  wish 
to  remain  so. 

The  fact  is  that  there  is  neither  logic  nor  historic 
truth  in  the  race  theory.  The  peoples  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine,  which  were  separate  principal- 
ities throughout  the  ever-changing  politics  of  the 
Middle  Age  having  each  a  different  history,  are 
yet  both  peoples  of  a  mixed  race  in  which  Ger- 
manic and  Celto-Roman  elements  are  inextricably 
blended.  The  latest  history  of  Alsace  and  Lor- 
raine speaks  of  the  latter  element,  that  is  the  Celto- 
Roman  element,  as  dominant. 

If  one  may  judge  from  the  kind  of  adjectives 
applied  to  the  Lorraine  character  in  the  chronicles 


1 8  Why  France  is  at  War 

of  successive  epochs,  the  military  and  chivalric 
spirit,  sensitiveness,  a  tendency  to  religious  fantasy, 
witty  conversation  are  repeatedly  mentioned  as  its 
attributes.1 

The  learned  and  eminent  historian  not  unnatu- 
rally concludes  that  these  characteristics  exclude 
the  hypothesis  of  a  dominance  of  German  blood. 
It  would  be  as  fair  indeed  to  characterize  the  people 
of  Brandenburg  and  Prussia  as  Celtic, — for  the 
basic  population  of  those  principalities  was  essen- 
tially Slavic  and  Lithuanian  and  was  Germanized 
by  colonists, — as  to  treat  that  of  Lorraine  as 
German.  Even  the  now  famous  Treitschke  was 
himself  of  Slavic  origin — a  curious  commentary 
upon  his  philosophy  of  Teutonic  race  supremacy, 
one  of  those  dangerous  by-products  of  national 
vanity  which  when  accompanied  by  physical  force 
of  a  high  order  may  lead  to  such  national  megalo- 
mania. 

Metz  contained  a  preponderance  of  the  French 
long  before  her  annexation  to  France,  and  Stanislas, 
last  Duke  of  Lorraine,  spoke  of  French  as  the 
national  language  of  the  people  of  the  duchy. 
The  people  had  become  French  in  fact  long  before 
the  death  of  their  last  Duke,  1766.  As  Miss 
Putnam  says,  however, 

1  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  Putnam,  p.  IOO. 


Why  France  is  at  War  19 

Undoubtedly  the  German  spoken — when  it  was 
not  the  Lorraine  patois — was  a  debased  speech, 
French  being  the  standard  for  the  better  classes. 
It  does  not  seem  from  casual  observation  that  the 
knowledge  of  German  was  very  extensive,  although 
Frederick  the  Great  assumes  that  a  "Lorrainer" 
ought  to  understand  German. x 

The  brief  and  emphatic  disposition  of  the  ques- 
tion in  Dr.  von  Mach's  observation  that  the  in- 
habitants of  the  unfortunate  provinces  were 
German  in  race  and  in  language,  seems  thus  to 
dispose  over-hastily  of  the  verdict  of  history. 
The  fact  appears  to  be  that  a  population  composed 
of  at  least  three  elements,  Celtic,  Roman,  and  Ger- 
manic, speaking  largely  French,  but  with  a  con- 
siderable admixture  of  German  patois,  had  after 
two  centuries  of  union  to  France  become  French- 
man with  aspirations  as  truly  national  as  the 
Frenchmen  of  Paris  or  of  Toulouse.  Enthusiastic 
devotees  of  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  they  loved 
a  regime  of  democracy  and  have  never  become 
reconciled  to  a  governmental  system  based  on 
"blood  and  iron." 

In  both  of  the  provinces  the  revivifying  influ- 
ences of  the  Revolution  had  been  deeply  felt  and 
the  democratic  doctrines  then  preached  aroused 
the  greatest  measure  of  zealous  devotion  to  France. 

1  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  Putnam,  p.  171. 


20  Why  France  is  at  War 

The  Revolution  and  the  Empire  of  Napoleon  had 
no  warmer  advocates  than  the  Alsatians  and  in 
every  great  French  victory,  willing  and  generous 
Alsatian  blood  was  shed.  Ney,  Oudinot,  Victor, 
St.  Cyr,  Gerard,  Lobau,  Kellermann,  Munier, 
Mouton,  Regnier  were  from  the  lost  provinces 
and  even  the  distinguished  German  historian 
Heinrich  von  Sybel,  bitterly  as  he  felt  toward  the 
French,  was  yet  unable  to  dispose  of  the  question 
in  a  mere  assertive  phrase,  for  he  says: 

We  know,  indeed,  that  the  Lorrainers,  since 
1766,  the  Alsatians,  since  1801,  have  become  good 
Frenchmen,  and  today  oppose,  by  a  large  majority, 
the  reunion  with  their  Fatherland.  For  such  an 
attitude,  we  do  not  deny,  we  feel  respect. 

It  is  not  without  a  sense  of  the  vanity  of  pro- 
phecy, however,  that  we  follow  him  when  he  says: 

But  we  trust  to  the  power  of  nature;  water  can 
be  diverted  for  a  time  into  artificial  channels,  but 
with  the  removal  of  the  dam  will  flow  with  the  full 
stream.  If  today  the  inhabitants  find  the  French 
more  sympathetic  than  the  Germans,  soon  they 
will  find  themselves  among  their  own  kind  in 
Germany. 

How  completely  has  the  history  of  the  last 
twenty-five  years  in  Alsace-Lorraine  falsified  the 
prophecy.  The  truth  is  that  no  nation  can  afford 


Why  France  is  at  War  21 

to  violate  the  fundamental  principles  of  justice  as 
understood  in  any  age.  If  in  earlier  times  it  had 
been  possible  to  transfer  civilized  peoples  from 
one  ruler  to  another,  the  American  and  the  French 
Revolutions  had  signalized  the  death-knell  of  any 
such  principle  or  practice. 

Recent  elections  to  the  Reichstag  are  claimed 
as  showing  the  love  of  the  Alsatians  for  Prussian 
hegemony.  They,  of  course,  merely  prove  the 
efficiency  of  the  Prussian  bureaucracy  in  managing 
elections.  That  is  no  new  story. 

When  Germany  took  Alsace  she  violated  funda- 
mental canons  of  morality  and  as  Dr.  von  Mach 
very  truly  says,  "sowed  the  seeds  of  a  future  war." 

In  1871  and  before  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort  had 
been  consummated,  Ernest  Renan  and  A.  M. 
Strauss,  intellectual  leaders  in  France  and  Ger- 
many respectively,  had  a  correspondence  on  the 
question  as  to  whether  the  two  provinces  should 
be  demanded  by  the  German  Empire.  To  Strauss's 
suggestion  that  the  people  were  Germanic  in 
origin  and  had  formed  in  the  past  part  of  the  old 
Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Renan 
pertinently  replies: 

Lorraine  undoubtedly  formed  a  portion  of  the 
Germanic  Empire;  but  so  did  Holland,  Switzerland, 
and  Italy  up  to  Benevento,  and  going  back  in  time 


22  Why  France  is  at  War 

beyond  the  treaty  of  Verdun  all  of  France  and  even 
Catalonia  were  parts  of  the  Empire.  Alsace  is 
now  a  Germanic  country  in  language  and  race ;  but 
before  being  invaded  by  the  German  race  Alsace 
was  a  Celtic  country,  as  was  a  portion  of  Southern 
Germany.  We  do  not  conclude  from  this  that  that 
portion  of  South  Germany  should  be  French,  but 
we  deny  your  right  to  maintain  that  by  ancient 
law  Metz  and  Strassburg  should  be  German.  Can 
any  one  say  where  this  kind  of  archaeology  should 
stop?  For  almost  every  Germanic  right  that  the 
advanced  patriots  of  Germany  claim,  we  could 
claim  an  earlier  Celtic  right,  and  before  the  Celtic 
period  there  existed,  it  is  said,  the  Allophyles,  the 
Finns,  and  the  Laps ;  and  before  the  Laps  there  were 
cave  men  and  before  the  cave  men  there  were  the 
orang-outangs.  So  with  this  kind  of  philosophy 
of  history  the  only  legitimate  justice  in  the  world 
would  be  the  right  of  the  orang-outangs  unjustly 
dispossessed  by  the  perfidy  of  civilized  peoples. 

And  again  commenting  upon  the  political  theory 
which  justified  the  transfer  of  the  provinces,  he 
said: 

Our  political  theory  [French]  is  the  theory  of  the 
law  of  nations ;  our  policy  is  the  policy  of  respecting 
the  law  of  nations ;  yours  is  the  policy  of  races.  We 
think  ours  the  better.  .  .  .  Yours  will  be  fatal  to 
you.  The  comparative  philology  which  you  have 
created  and  mistakenly  transported  into  the  domain 
of  politics,  will  play  you  a  fatal  turn.  The  Slavs 
believe  it  enthusiastically ;  every  Slav  schoolmaster 
becomes  an  enemy  for  you,  a  white  ant  who  ruins 


Why  France  is  at  War  23 

your  house.  How  can  you  believe  that  Slavs  will 
not  do  for  you  what  you  are  doing  to  others;  they 
in  all  things  follow  you  step  for  step.  Every  affir- 
mation of  Germanism  is  an  affirmation  of  Slavism. 

He  recalls  the  fact  that  Posen  and  Silesia  are 
Germanic  and  that  Russia  might  well  ask  their 
transfer  on  the  same  theory  of  race  that  Germany 
applied  to  Alsace.  German  leaders  today  may 
well  be  silent  on  the  race  theory. 

We  are  told  by  certain  German  apologists  that 
Alsace-Lorraine  has  been  already  Germanized.  I 
say,  without  fear  of  contradiction  from  impartial 
observers  and  neutrals  who  have  lived  in  that  land 
or  studied  its  recent  history,  that  such  is  not  the 
fact.  German  military  methods  have  not  taught 
the  people  to  feel  affection  for  Germany;  on  the 
contrary  the  iron  heel  of  Germany's  military  power 
is  more  hated  today  than  it  has  ever  been. 

Replying  years  ago  to  the  tactless  remark  of  a 
certain  German  Chancellor  that  he  was  pleased  to 
see  that  France  had  forgotten  Alsace-Lorraine, 
the  French  Ambassador  to  whom  the  remark  was 
addressed  said:  "You  Germans,  sir,  have  dispensed 
us  from  the  necessity  of  keeping  them  in  mind." 

The  Alsatian  had  lived  too  long  in  the  fold  of 
the  refined  and  gentle  French  civilization  to  frater- 
nize with  the  Prussian.  He  loved  France,  its 


24  Why  France  is  at  War 

ideas,  its  literature,  its  aspirations.  Nor  were 
the  new  methods  employed  calculated  to  alienate 
his  affections  from  the  old  allegiance.  Dr.  von 
Mach  speaks  of  the  amount  "of  communal  and 
individual  freedom"  which  the  provinces  have  en- 
joyed under  German  rule.  But  this  "freedom" 
made  it  an  offence  to  speak  the  French  language 
which  they  loved,  and  created  a  regime  of  laws  of 
exception,  that  is  a  -kind  of  martial  law  utterly 
abhorrent  to  any  free  and  civilized  population, 
which  permitted  arbitrary  acts  as  in  time  of  war. 
The  truth  is  that  Alsace-Lorraine  has  been  treated 
as  a  conquered  province,  despised  by  the  Germans 
of  the  North  who  have  attempted  to  Germanize 
it  by  force. 

The  provinces  have  been  an  armed  camp  and  so 
strong  has  been  the  remembrance  of  France  in  the 
Alsatian  mind  that  from  1900  to  1903,  22,000 
young  men  risked  death  and  exile  by  fleeing  from 
their  homes  to  enlist  in  the  foreign  legion  of  the 
French  army.  In  vain  the  German  press  warned 
them  against  leaving  Germany  and  of  the  horrors 
of  going  to  Africa  under  the  French  flag.  A  larger 
number  of  Alsatians  enlisted  in  1912  than  had 
enlisted  during  a  single  year  since  1871.  This  is 
indeed  a  strange  commentary  upon  the  concilia- 
tory and  enlightened  regime  to  which  Dr.  von 


Why  France  is  at  War  25 

Mach  refers.  Strange  "Kultur"  indeed  which  in- 
spires such  devotion.  Even  among  the  girls  there 
has  been  an  enforced  educational  system  excluding 
the  French  language  and  cutting  them  off  from 
their  beloved  heritage  of  civilization,  that  the 
race  might  be  Teutonized  or  Prussianized,  and  yet 
last  year  only  when  the  Empress  of  Germany 
visited  a  German  school  and  asked  the  girls  what 
they  wanted  as  a  gift,  they  replied  that  "they 
might  be  taught  a  little  French."1 

The  effects  of  German  policy  in  the  twentieth 
century  and  the  beneficence  of  their  rule  were  in- 
stanced only  as  recently  as  the  autumn  of  1913 
in  the  Saverne  incident  when  Lieutenant  von  Fost- 
ner,  having  before  him  a  soldier  accused  of  stab- 
bing an  Alsatian  and  who  had  been  sentenced  to 
two  months'  imprisonment,  cried:  "Two  months 
on  account  of  an  Alsatian  blackguard!  I  would 
have  given  you  ten  marks  for  your  trouble." 

The  remark  did  not  seem  to  please  the  docile 
population,  whose  affections  had  evidently  not 
been  completely  won  over  by  von  Fostner's  coun- 
trymen, for  when  he  and  his  soldiers  appeared  on 
the  streets  they  were  hooted  and  Saverne  was  put 
under  martial  law. 

In  order,  perhaps,  to  demonstrate  the  "commu- 

1  New  Map  of  England,  Gilbert,  p.  16. 


26  Why  France  is  at  War 

nal  freedom"  with  which  that  lovely  country  has 
been  blessed  since  1871,  Lieutenant  von  Fostner 
struck  a  lame  shoemaker  across  the  forehead  with 
his  sword.  The  matter  had  then  reached  a  point 
where  public  sentiment  in  Europe  demanded 
some  action.  The  German  military  authorities  did 
withdraw  the  garrison  but  gave  the  guilty  officers 
merely  nominal  sentences  and  it  was  evident  that 
their  actions  met  with  no  real  reproval  and  were 
indicative  of  the  general  sentiment  in  Prussia  in 
regard  to  the  people  of  Alsace. 

The  ideas  of  Nietschke  and  Treitschke  and 
Bernhardi  are  not  apparently  calculated  to  make 
loving  and  loyal  subjects  out  of  those  who  have 
been  forcibly  transferred  under  the  sceptre  of 
Prussian  militarism.  "The  will  to  power"  is  evi- 
dently not  the  way  to  love  and  affection.  World 
opinion  would  seem  rather  to  approve  the  very 
different  methods  employed  by  Great  Britain  in 
Canada,  where  fairness  and  justice  have  accom- 
plished among  the  French  population  so  admirably 
what  "Kultur"  and  force  have  failed  so  lamenta- 
bly to  do  in  Alsace. 

But  we  are  told  by  Dr.  von  Mach  of  a  petition 
presented  by  the  Alsatian  representative  in  the 
German  Reichstag,  in  August,  1914,  deploring  the 
possibility  of  war  between  France  and  Germany: 


Why  France  is  at  War  27 

The  idea  of  war  between  France  and  Germany  is 
so  terrible  and  awful  for  us  people  in  Alsace  that  we 
hardly  dare  to  think  of  it.  We  do  not  want  a  war 
between  Germany  and  France  at  any  cost,  certainly 
not  for  the  sake  of  altering  our  political  position. 
People  who  have  spread  a  different  view  among  the 
French  and  have  thereby  fanned  the  French 
thoughts  of  war  are  traitors  to  our  people  and  have 
drawn  upon  themselves  the  curses  of  thousands  of 
Alsatian  people:  fathers,  mothers,  and  wives  who 
with  bleeding  hearts  must  see  their  sons  and  hus- 
bands go  into  the  most  terrible  of  wars. 

I  cannot  but  think  it  strange  that  this  appeal 
should  be  held  to  indicate  love  of  Germany.  As 
the  young  Alsatians  are  forced  into  the  German 
armies  and  are  compelled  to  shoot  Frenchmen,  their 
parents  can  scarcely  welcome  war  between  the  two 
countries,  which,  whatever  its  ultimate  result, 
must  in  the  interim  destroy  a  great  portion  of  the 
population  of  these  unfortunate  lands.  Then, 
perhaps,  like  the  petition  of  1871  it  was  procured 
by  fraud.1 

Now,  it  is  surely  impossible  to  contemplate  the 
history  of  Alsace-Lorraine  since  the  cession  with- 
out feeling  that  even  from  her  own  standpoint 
Germany  made  a  fatal  blunder  in  laying  what 
Dr.  von  Mach  so  rightly  calls  "the  foundation 
of  another  war." 

1  Putnam,  p.  172. 


28  Why  France  is  at  War 

It  is  not  accurate,  however,  to  suppose  that  this 
war  is  due  to  French  hostility  to  Germany  and 
desire  to  recover  Alsace-Lorraine.  "Revanche'1 
connotes  not  revenge  but  rather  redress.  If  the 
French  have  not  and  could  not  forget  the  unfor- 
tunate peoples  whose  hearts  and  minds  have 
for  the  past  forty-three  years  been  so  inclined 
to  the  country  of  their  old  allegiance,  they  have 
yet,  in  all  that  time,  never  done  one  act  which 
could  justly  provoke  the  German  Empire  into 
hostility.  During  that  long  period  of  time  the 
relations  between  the  two  have  at  nearly  all  times 
been  severely  strained  and  I  propose  to  show  that 
every  untoward  incident  was  due  to  the  primary 
mistake  consecrated  by  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort  in 
which  Germany  attempted  so  to  weaken  France  as 
to  place  her  in  a  quasi-dependent  position  in  which 
she  could  scarce  assert  the  rights  inherent  in  every 
nation  without  menace  from  the  German  cannon. 

Had  Germany  not  thus  endeavoured  to  destroy 
the  balance  of  power  in  Europe  and  to  inflict  per- 
manent and  endless  humiliation  upon  an  old  rival, 
this  war  would  not  and  could  not,  in  my  judgment, 
have  taken  place.  Yet  however  desirous  France 
may  have  been  for  peace,  the  continuous  German 
policy  of  interfering  in  French  affairs,  domestic 
and  colonial,  must  in  the  end  have  forced  the  other 


Why  France  is  at  War  29 

great  nations  of  Europe  to  restore  the  balance  of 
power  thus  menaced  by  Prussian  militarism,  now 
so  strenuously  striving  for  complete  mastery  in 
Europe. 

French  thrift  and  the  ability  of  the  French  wo- 
men to  save  enabled  the  gigantic  indemnity  of 
five  milliards  to  be  paid  off  before  1873  and  French 
territory  was  finally  liberated  of  German  troops. 
France  began  to  reconstitute  her  national  life, 
and  among  other  things  her  national  defence,  with- 
out which  even  the  guaranties  given  her  by  the 
Treaty  of  Frankfort  would  have  been  of  little 
value,  and  her  life  as  a  nation  would  have  been  in 
constant  jeopardy. 

In  1875,  only  two  years  after  the  withdrawal  of 
the  German  troops  and  on  the  occasion  of  a  vote 
of  the  Chamber  for  a  very  moderate  increase  and 
reorganization  of  the  French  army,  the  German 
press  began  to  thunder  for  war  and  to  claim  that 
France  had  not  been  sufficiently  crushed.  Not 
only  the  press,  but  through  diplomatic  channels 
the  French  Ambassador  in  Berlin  was  informed  of 
an  imminent  attack  by  Germany.  If  this  attack 
did  not  take  place,  it  was  mainly  due  to  the  inter- 
vention of  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  who,  when  the 
matter  was  recounted  to  him  by  the  French 
Ambassador  at  St.  Petersburg,  asserted  that  he 


30  Why  France  is  at  War 

would  not  allow  France  to  be  surprised  and 
attacked. * 

Although  it  was  not  for  some  years  after  this 
that  France  and  Russia  entered  into  a  defensive 
alliance  (1879),  yet  amicable  relations  began  at 
that  time,  Russia  evidently  appreciating  the  fact 
that  its  own  interests  would  not  permit  the  de- 
struction of  the  French  nation  and  the  complete 
hegemony  of  Germany  in  Western  Europe. 

Germany  continued  after  1871  to  increase  its 
military  forces  and  its  army  organization.  Law 
after  law  for  the  last  forty-three  years  has  been 
passed  to  that  effect,  until  in  April,  1913,  the 
regular  standing  army  was  raised  to  the  extraor- 
dinary figure  of  866,000  men  and  a  war  contribu- 
tion of  a  milliard  of  marks  was  voted.  This  surely 
indicated  the  imminence  of  the  blow. 

During  all  this  time  France  has  only  three  times 
modified  its  military  regime  and  always  in  reponse 
to  an  earlier  military  law  of  Germany.  In  1889 
by  the  establishment  of  three  years'  service;  in 
1905  by  the  reduction  of  the  service  to  two  years; 
and  finally  in  August,  1913,  and  as  a  result  of  the 
German  menace,  the  three  years'  service  was 
re-established. 

1  Hanotaux,  Histoire  de  la  France  Contemporainc,  vol.  iii.,  p. 
256. 


Why  France  is  at  War  31 

In  the  early  days  of  the  war,  German  apologists 
cried  out  against  the  Slavic  peril.  This  seems  now 
to  have  been  forgotten  and  hatred  of  Britannic 
power  taken  its  place. 

As  far  as  France  is  concerned  a  defensive  alli- 
ance with  some  other  great  power  was  a  necessity 
if  she  were  to  maintain  her  role  among  the  nations. 
The  idea  that  the  alliance  with  Russia  was  to  en- 
able her  to  carry  on  a  war  of  revenge  is  not  borne 
out  by  the  facts  and  is  untrue.  German  publicists 
and  statesmen  themselves  have  admitted  that  the 
alliance  had  in  it  nothing  menacing  to  German 
safety.  After  the  conclusion  of  the  alliance, 
between  1891  and  1894,  by  means  of  various  con- 
ventions, the  German  Government  kept  up  the 
most  amicable  relations  with  Russia  and  agree- 
ments and  treaties  were  made  between  them  as 
to  matters  of  special  interest  to  the  two  countries, 
such  as  their  spheres  of  economic  influence  in 
Asiatic  Persia  and  in  Turkey,  and  as  late  as  1910 
the  present  Chancellor  von  Bethmann-Hollweg 
stated  with  reference  to  a  visit  made  by  the  Em- 
peror Nicholas  to  Potsdam  that  the  result  of  the 
interview  had  been  that 

the  two  nations  have  decided  to  undertake  nothing 
which  might  oppose  them  one  against  the  other. 
We  have  seen  the  disappearance  of  the  occasions 


32  Why  France  is  at  War 

of  misunderstanding  which  here  and  there  existed 
and  the  ancient  relations  of  confidence  between 
Russia  and  Germany  have  been  reaffirmed  and 
strengthened. 

If  the  German  Chancellor  had  believed  the  Franco- 
Russian  alliance  to  have  other  than  a  pacific  and 
defensive  character,  could  he  possibly  have  made 
such  a  statement  ? 

We  have  had  recently  much  talk  of  an  attempt 
to  isolate  Germany.  This  great  and  powerful 
Empire,  not  satisfied  with  its  victory  over  France, 
and  its  dominant  position  in  Central  Europe,  as  a 
consequence  of  the  war  of  1871,  concluded  in  1879 
with  Austria  and  Italy  the  alliance  known  as  the 
" Triple  Alliance"  and  which  she  claimed  to  be  a 
defensive  pact.  To  this  alliance  France  made  no 
opposition  whatever  and  took  Germany  at  her  word 
that  the  alliance  was  defensive.  The  present  offen- 
sive character  of  the  war  was  clearly  indicated  by 
the  neutrality  of  Italy,  who,  if  the  German  view  of 
the  war  is  correct,  would  have  had  to  stand  with  her. 
The  suggestion  that  these  three  great  powers  could 
be  in  dangerous  isolation  is  of  course  quite  absurd. 

Down  to  1895  Germany  made  no  objection  to 
the  French  policy  of  colonization.  On  the  con- 
trary Bismarck  encouraged  it.  In  speaking  of 
French  conquests  in  Africa  he  said : 


Why  France  is  at  War  33 

We  must  leave  the  African  sand  to  be  scratched 
by  the  Gallic  cock. 

When  the  African  sand,  however,  had  been  suffi- 
ciently fertilized  to  become  valuable,  it  became  a 
subject  for  German  covetousness.  In  his  recent 
work  on  German  policy,  Chancellor  von  Bulow 
states  that  Germany  designedly  left  undisturbed 
French  enterprise  in  Tunis  and  in  Tonkin-China; 
and  even  in  regard  to  the  Moroccan  protectorate, 
which  so  agitated  German  policy  later  on,  Prince 
Hohenlohe  declared  in  1880  that  Germany  had  no 
interest  in  Morocco  and  that  her  delegate  should 
conform  to  the  attitude  of  his  colleague  of  France 
in  dealing  with  the  Sultan.  No  objection  was 
made  to  the  French  expedition  to  Tonkin-China. 
After  1895,  however,  when  the  policy  of  Bis- 
marck had  given  place  to  that  of  the  present 
Kaiser,  who  had  declared  that  "our  future  is  on 
the  sea,  "  a  different  attitude  was  adopted.  The 
peace-loving  population  of  France,  content  with 
the  prosperity  of  the  country,  were  beginning  to 
agitate  for  disarmament,  and  never  had  there  been 
so  little  militant  feeling  or  such  a  keen  desire  to 
follow  the  higher  dictates  of  humanity  and  dispense 
with  the  military  solution  of  problems  as  when 
they  were  rudely  awakened  from  their  pacificist 
millennial  dreams  by  the  rattle  of  the  Kaiser's 


34  Why  France  is  at  War 

sabre  at  Tangier.  At  that  moment  the  result  of 
the  battle  of  Mukden  was  known  and  Russia's 
military  power  was  for  the  moment  prostrate. 

Was  it  mere  coincidence  that  then  led  the  Em- 
peror to  proclaim  to  his  subjects  that  they  must 
remember  the  battles  of  Worth,  Weissenburg,  and 
of  Sedan? 

I  hope  that  peace  will  not  be  disturbed  and  that 
the  events  which  are  taking  place  around  us  will 
cause  our  eyes  to  see  clearly  and  will  steel  our 
courage  so  that  we  shall  be  found  united  if  it  be- 
comes necessary  to  interfere  in  the  policy  of  the 
world. 

And  at  Mainz  in  opening  a  new  bridge,  the 
Kaiser  expresses  his  conviction  that 

if  it  should  have  to  be  used  for  transport  of  a  war- 
like nature,  it  will  prove  perfectly  adapted  to  its 
work. 

Up  to  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  France's  diplo- 
matic situation  had  seemed  fairly  assured  and  if 
since  the  alliance  with  Russia  she  had  not  been 
threatened  with  renewed  war  as  in  1875,  it  was 
because  of  this  defensive  alliance,  by  reason  of 
which  she  had  been  able  to  emerge  from  the  iso- 
lated and  dependent  condition  in  which  the  Treaty 
of  Frankfort  had  designedly  left  her. 


Why  France  is  at  War  35 

The  dread  of  German  attack  and  of  national 
humiliation  in  the  diplomatic  forum  had  thereby 
been  averted.  Great  Russian  loans  had  been  nego- 
tiated in  France  and  international  courtesies  were 
frequently  interchanged.  One  of  Germany's  most 
eminent  apologists  and  the  chief  of  her  propaganda 
in  this  country  has  gone  so  far  as  to  state  that  the 
moving  cause  for  the  entry  of  France  into  the 
war  was  fear  that  the  loans  of  her  citizens  might 
be  cancelled  by  the  Russian  Government  if  she 
did  not  draw  the  sword.  I  do  not  for  one  moment 
question  the  good  faith  of  the  distinguished  ex- 
colonial  secretary,  Dr.  Dernburg,  who  in  a  recent 
publication  voiced  such  an  opinion.  It  is  by 
reason  of  its  very  good  faith  that  it  becomes  sig- 
nificant of  the  complete  and  total  inability  of  the 
powerful  Teutonic  intellect  to  understand  the 
French  mind  and  the  French  heart,  either  in  old 
France  or  in  Alsace-Lorraine.  To  him  who  knows 
France  and  the  French  mother,  who  understands 
the  family  life  of  her  people  and  the  close  links 
which  bind  together  the  family  units,  the  belief 
that  the  possibility  of  a  mere  commercial  loss  of 
certain  credits  would  cause  the  nation  to  risk  its 
best  blood  in  a  death  struggle  is  altogether  incon- 
ceivable; that  M.  Viviani,  the  French  Prime 
Minister,  whose  son  has  lost  his  life  within  the  last 


36  Why  France  is  at  War 

few  days  on  the  battlefield,  should  have  pushed 
the  French  people  to  war  because  he  feared  the 
loss  of  the  Russian  loans,  that  the  peasant,  whose 
little  savings  were  invested  in  the  Russian  securi- 
ties, should  have  sent  his  son  to  fight  and  die 
because  of  his  interest  in  Russia's  credit,  is  some- 
thing so  impossible  to  those  who  know  France  that 
it  must  emphasize  the  inability  of  the  German 
intellect,  to  sufficiently  understand  the  human 
heart  as  to  have  the  slightest  rightful  claim  to 
world  dominance. 

If  the  war  were,  as  I  believe  it  to  have  been,  an 
effort  on  the  part  of  Germany  to  expand  her  com- 
mercial power  and  possibilities,  and  to  take  por- 
tions of  the  earth's  surface  which  did  not  belong  to 
her,  no  such  acquisitive  feeling  animated  the  French 
population,  and  when,  in  the  first  days  of  August 
of  this  year,  men  of  all  classes,  all  parties,  and  all 
shades  of  opinion  rose  as  one  man  in  defence  of  the 
national  territory,  the  last  consideration  which  oc- 
curred to  those  who  went  to  fight,  and  those  who 
remained  at  home  to  mourn,  was  one  of  a  financial 
nature. 

In  1904  France's  situation  was  more  critical 
than  it  had  been  since  in  1875  the  Czar  had  assured 
her  that  he  would  not  stand  idly  by  were  she  again 
attacked.  The  consequences  of  Russia's  Man- 


Why  France  is  at  War  37 

churian  policy,  had  not  been  foreseen.  French 
capital  had  gone  into  the  Trans-Siberian  Rail- 
way, and  the  able  and  brilliant  M.  Delcasse  had 
apparently  done  nothing  to  divert  Russia  from 
her  policy  and  to  prevent  the  war  with  Japan. 

Bitter  was  the  disappointment  in  France  at  the 
news  from  the  Far  East,  and  the  final  disaster  at 
Mukden  seemed  to  render  the  Russian  alliance  of 
little  value  to  France,  and  to  place  her  again  in  a 
position  of  enforced  isolation. 

The  French  Foreign  Office  had,  however,  done 
more  than  effect  the  Russian  alliance.  Three 
centuries  of  conflict  had  divided  France  from 
England.  Clashing  colonial  interests  in  all  parts 
of  the  world,  the  memory  of  Egypt  abandoned  to 
the  English,  the  unwillingness  or  inability  of  the 
government  to  support  French  explorers  in  Africa, 
and  the  final  humiliation  of  the  Fashoda  incident, 
made  any  rapprochement  between  the  two  coun- 
tries seem  a  feeble  and  hopeless  dream.  Yet  in 
diplomacy  it  is  usually  the  unexpected  that  hap- 
pens. Great,  therefore,  was  the  surprise,  when, 
on  the  8th  of  April,  1904,  the  entente  cordiale  be- 
tween the  two  countries  became  known,  with  an 
eclaircissement  of  all  the  old  misunderstandings 
and  a  guaranty  of  friendly  co-operation  in  the 
future  against  a  disturbance  in  the  balance  of 


38  Why  France  is  at  War 

power.  The  common  dread  of  German  hegemony 
had  turned  the  hereditary  enemies  into  friends, 
all  in  a  day.  England's  reply  to  Emperor  William 
II.'s  appeal  to  the  German  people  saying,  "our 
future  is  on  the  sea,"  is  to  be  found  in  the  entente 
ably  and  tactfully  initiated  by  that  masterly 
diplomat — King  Edward  VII. 

The  solution  of  the  old  quarrel  also  involved 
recognition  of  France's  peculiar  situation  in 
Morocco,  and  thus  led  to  the  entente  being  put  to 
a  test  in  short  order.  But  M.  Delcasse  not  only 
aimed  at  better  relations  with  England.  Italy's 
adherence  to  the  German-Austrian  alliance  had 
been  largely  due  to  dislike  and  jealousy  of  France. 
Nations  are  not  usually  grateful.  Louis  Napo- 
leon's policy  of  aiding  Italian  consolidation,  with- 
out allowing  the  monarchy  to  occupy  Rome,  had 
created  a  condition  of  "  gallophobia, "  illogical  as 
it  may  seem.  Subsequently,  jealousy  of  France's 
extension  in  North  Africa,  and  consequent  wid- 
ening of  her  influence  in  the  Mediterranean,  em- 
bittered relations.  This  situation  was,  however, 
due  to  sentiment  rather  than  to  the  real  interest 
of  the  nation.  For  Italy,  "the  financial  conse- 
quences of  the  alliance  with  Germany  were  dis- 
astrous." Friendly  relations  with  the  Paris  money 
market  were  potent  to  accomplish  what  Louis 


Why  France  is  at  War  39 

Napoleon's  Quixotic  attitude  so  miserably  failed 
to  do.  Thus,  M.  Delcasse  was  able  to  bring 
about  a  rapprochement  with  Italy,  which,  without 
modifying  the  text  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  made  it 
lose  its  edge.  Italy  had  been  led  to  interpret  it 
as  purely  defensive  and  she  ceased  to  be — by  her 
provocative  attitude — an  excuse  for  possible  Ger- 
man aggression.  The  Triple  Alliance  thus  became 

less  threatening  militarily,  more  peaceable  politi- 
cally. To  Germany,  if  attacked  by  France  it 
leaves  the  support  of  the  Italian  army;  but  for  an 
attack  on  France  there  is  no  longer  the  assistance 
of  Italian  provocations.1 

Again,  as  part  of  the  wise  policy  of  the  French 
Foreign  Office,  close  relations  were  established 
with  Spain.  Spain's  claims  in  Morocco,  which 
might  have  been  a  source  of  international  irrita- 
tion, were  recognized,  and  her  aid  secured  to 
France  in  her  endeavour  to  tranquillize  that 
troubled  country.  Possession  of  Algeria  and  of 
Tunis  gave  France  a  peculiar  situation.  In  the 
loosely  organized,  feudal  condition  of  the  Sultan's 
domains,  constant  disorder  menaces  the  French 
frontier  and  her  African  possessions;  profitable 
commercial  relations  cannot  be  developed  and 
French  capital  is  cut  off  from  a  valuable  source  of 

!  France  and  the  Alliances,  Tardieu. 


40  Why  France  is  at  War 

exploitation.  With  this  in  view  France  and  Spain 
agreed  to  recognize  common  interests  and  a  rather 
vague  understanding  was  entered  into  in  the 
summer  of  1904  that  the  French  Republic  and  the 
King  of  Spain, 

having  agreed  to  determine  the  extent  and  the 
guarantee  of  the  interests  belonging  to  France  by 
reason  of  her  Algerian  possessions  and  to  Spain  by 
reason  of  her  possessions  on  the  coasts  of  Morocco, 
.  .  .  declare  that  they  remain  firmly  attached  to 
the  integrity  of  the  Moroccan  Empire  under  the 
sovereignty  of  the  Sultan.1 

This  was  the  diplomatic  situation  in  which 
France  found  herself  at  the  moment  of  the  battle 
of  Mukden.  Scarcely,  however,  had  the  news 
reached  Berlin,  when  the  German  Government, 
which  had  apparently  had  knowledge  of,  and 
tacitly,  at  least,  acquiesced  in,  the  Moroccan 
understanding,  informed  the  French  Foreign  Of- 
fice that  these  agreements  were  entered  into 
for  the  purpose  of  isolating  Germany;  that  they 
would  not  be  considered  valid  without  the  assent 
of  Germany,  and  that  M.  Delcasse  must  be  dis- 
missed and  a  conference  called.  Unfortunately 
M.  Delcasse's  work  had  been  purely  diplomatic. 
France  had  relied  too  much  upon  the  justice  of  her 

'/<*. 


Why  France  is  at  War  41 

position  and  a  belief  in  the  good  faith  of  her  mili- 
tant neighbour.  Internal  dissensions  and  social- 
istic policies  had  weakened  the  French  army,  the 
Government  was  not  prepared  to  fight,  and  the 
people  were  anxious  to  maintain  peace.  The  Gov- 
ernment, therefore,  swallowed  the  humiliation  of 
dismissing  M.  Delcasse  and  acquiesced  in  the 
conference  plan. 

Germany  thus  seemed  to  have  re-established 
her  hegemony  in  Europe,  as  in  the  Bismarckian 
time.  Results  of  the  conference  showed,  however, 
that  while  the  Triple  Alliance  still  stood,  France 
was  no  longer  isolated.  Her  policy  and  rights 
were  practically  acquiesced  in  by  all  the  nations 
save  Germany  and  Austria,  and  while  the  humili- 
ation of  having  to  dismiss  her  minister,  and  bow 
to  the  demands  of  Germany,  was  still  upon  her 
a  show  of  hands  had  proved  that  the  Triple  Alli- 
ance found  itself  opposed  by  France,  England,  and 
Russia  with  Italy  sustaining  the  French  view, 
Austria  alone  voting  finally  with  Germany.  That 
the  Moroccan  incident  was  a  mere  pretext  to 
batter  down  the  diplomatic  combinations  which 
Germany  seemed  to  feel  threatened  her  hegemony, 
appears  clear;  but  what  Germany  really  feared  was 
not  isolation,  for  of  that  there  was  no  danger,  but 
rather  that  France  should  cease  to  be  isolated 


4-3  Why  France  is  at  War 

and  become  the  centre  of  a  combination  that 
could  diplomatically  checkmate,  if  occasion  arose, 
the  dominant  ascendancy  of  the  "Triplice." 
Thus  Germany  then  failed 

to  build  up,  on  the  threshold  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, the  most  extraordinary  structure  of  political 
power  that  had  ever  been  raised  since  the  time  of 
Napoleon  I.;  to  save  Bismarck's  work  from  the 
assaults  of  ages. 

The  object  of  German  policy  has  certainly  not 
been  to  prevent  her  own  isolation,  of  which  there 
never  was  any  probability,  but  rather  to  insure  the 
continued  isolation  of  France. 

And  yet  France  can  scarce  be  blamed  for  having 
been  taken  by  surprise  at  the  German  attitude,  for 
as  late  as  the  I2th  of  April,  1904,  speaking  in  the 
Reichstag  Chancellor  von  Bulow  had  said : 

We  have  no  reason  to  think  that  a  Franco-English 
agreement  will  threaten  any  other  power.  What 
seems  to  have  taken  place  is  an  attempt  to  suppress 
the  differences  which  have  existed  between  France 
and  England  by  means  of  an  amicable  agreement. 
Against  this  we  have  nothing  to  complain  from  a 
standpoint  of  German  interests. 

In  what  concerns  the  most  important  phase  of 
this  agreement,  that  is  to  say  Morocco,  our  interests 
in  that  country,  as  in  general  in  the  Mediterranean, 
are  principally  of  an  economic  order.  We  also 


Why  France  is  at  War  43 

are  interested  in  having  peace  and  order  in  that 
country.  On -the  other  hand  we  have  no  reason  to 
fear  that  our  economic  interests  will  be  disposed  of  or 
will  be  injured  by  any  power. 

At  that  time  Germany  had  little  interest  in 
Morocco  as  her  commerce  did  not  amount  to  more 
than  nine  per  cent,  of  the  total  commerce  in  the 
Cherifien  Empire. 

At  the  Conference  of  Algeciras  the  special 
French  rights  in  Morocco  were  recognized.  Ger- 
many was  given  ample  protection  for  her  commer- 
cial rights  and  all  her  attempts  at  coercing  France 
into  parting  with  any  of  her  rights  in  North  Africa 
were  voted  down  by  the  European  powers.  War 
was  thus  narrowly  averted  because  of  the  pa- 
tience and  acquiescence  of  the  French  Government 
and  the  French  people,  who  dismissed  their  min- 
ister to  placate  Germany  and  submitted  their 
rights  to  the  judgment  of  a  European  Congress. 

Yet  in  1911,  the  German  policy  of  continuous 
aggression  again  manifested  itself.  The  German 
Emperor  announced  that  he  would  not  recognize 
any  arrangement  concerning  Morocco  which  pre- 
vented him  from  treating  directly  with  the  Sultan, 
and  in  1911  a  German  warship  was  sent  to  seize 
the  Moroccan  port  of  Agadir  on  the  pretext  that 
the  safety  of  German  commercial  interests  were 


44  Why  France  is  at  War 

imperilled  by  the  disorders  in  Morocco.  A  Ger- 
man Minister  is  said  to  have  declared  that  Agadir 
once  occupied  would  never  be  evacuated.  The 
crisis  brought  Europe  once  more  to  the  verge  of 
war  and  tested  to  the  uttermost  the  strength  of 
the  Anglo-French  entente. 

It  was  made  clear  by  the  speech  of  Mr.  Lloyd- 
George,  evidently  voicing  the  views  of  the  Govern- 
ment, that  England  would  not  be  an  indifferent 
spectator  in  a  quarrel  foisted  upon  France  because 
of  Morocco  and  because  of  her  understanding  with 
England.  Probably  war  would  then  have  ensued 
had  it  not  been  for  the  moderation  of  the  French 
Government,  which,  in  return  for  rights  of  a  purely 
imaginary  and  non-existent  character,  agreed  to 
surrender  to  Germany  a  large  slice  of  her  Congo 
territory  and  thus  once  again  buy  her  peace. 
Vast  and  rich  territory  along  the  river  Congo 
was  brought  to  aggrandize  the  German  colony 
of  Kamerun. 

The  French  and  English  public,  however,  had 
now  become  painfully  enlightened  as  to  German 
intentions,  and  it  was  evident  that  peace  might 
at  any  moment  be  troubled  by  the  appearance  of 
the  "mailed  fist."  When  in  1908  Austria-Hungary 
in  violation  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  annexed  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina,  the  German  Emperor  had  stood, 


Why  France  is  at  War  45 

as  he  said,  "in  shining  armour"  by  the  side  of  his 
ally  to  support  this  breach  of  the  public  law  of 
Europe.  Reverting  to  the  preceding  year  (1907) 
we  can  see  how  natural  it  was  that  all  of  Great 
Britain's  efforts  for  the  curtailment  of  naval  arm- 
ament, and  that  all  propositions  looking  towards 
limitation  of  armament  at  the  two  Hague  Con- 
ferences should  have  been  spurned  by  the  German 
Government. 

When,  therefore,  at  the  end  of  July  last,  Austria 
attempted  to  destroy  the  autonomy  and  self- 
government  of  Servia  by  forcing  her  to  assent  to 
a  series  of  propositions  which  no  independent  na- 
tion could  possibly  have  accepted,  Europe  was  not, 
perhaps,  surprised  to  see  the  German  Emperor 
again  standing  by,  "in  shining  armour,"  and  evi- 
dently directing  his  ally ;  and  when  the  ally  seemed 
to  hesitate  and  to  meditate  the  acceptance  of  such 
pusillanimous  methods  as  conference  and  media- 
tion she  was  apparently  ordered  to  strike  with 
the  "mailed  fist." 

Five  days  before  the  Austrian  Ambassador  left 
Paris,  and  Austria  declared  war  against  France, 
German  advance  guards  had  crossed  the  French 
frontier,  had  shot  French  custom  officers  and  sol- ' 
diers,  and  destroyed  French  property. 

The  French  Government  in  order  to  avoid  the 


46  Why  France  is  at  War 

"crushing  responsibility,"  as  the  Premier  well 
termed  it,  of  initiating  such  a  war,  several  days 
before  the  termination  of  diplomatic  relations, 
withdrew  her  troops  ten  kilometers  from  the 
frontier,  and  there  they  remained  passive,  the  en- 
tire nation  awaiting  the  attack  which  forty-three 
years  of  almost  continuous  aggression  had  finally 
taught  them  was  inevitable. 

With  the  immediate  occasions  of  the  war  I  will 
not  deal.  They  have  been  discussed  at  great 
length  in  our  press  and  the  American  public  un- 
derstands them.  It  is  scarcely  now  claimed  that 
Germany  and  Austria  did  not  strike  the  first  blow, 
and  their  invasion  of  Belgium  and  their  defiance 
of  public  law  and  treaties  has  been  sustained  only 
by  a  plea  of  "necessity  which  knows  no  law." 
This  plea  of  necessity  in  its  ultimate  analysis  is 
found  to  be,  not  danger  of  aggression  from  other 
States,  because  the  unpreparedness  of  the  others 
has,  since  the  war  began,  been  made  most  mani- 
fest but  because  Germany  forsooth  now  believes 
that  she  had  been  denied  "her  place  in  the  Sun." 
Having  come  late  into  the  family  of  nations  others 
had  taken  the  fair  spots  of  the  earth's  surface,  and 
her  diplomacy  having  neglected  or  failed  during 
the  last  thirty  years  to  acquire  sufficient  colonial 
territory  she  feared  lest  the  alliance  between  France 


Why  France  is  at  War  47 

and  Great  Britain  might  exclude  her  from  taking 
m  et  armis  the  territory  which  they  already  owned. 

The  lines  are  thus  drawn  between  predatory 
political  passion  and  fanatical  national  conceit 
on  the  one  hand,  vested  rights  and  elementary 
law  and  morals  on  the  other.  There  can  hence  be 
no  compromise  and  the  French  nation  has  decided 
with  stern  unanimity  that  the  struggle  must  con- 
tinue to  the  very  end.  An  uncertain  peace  and 
another  generation  of  national  nightmare  must 
not  and  will  not  be. 

In  final  analysis  it  is  impossible  to  discover  any 
other  explanation  of  Germany's  course.  Viewed 
in  the  light  of  her  policy  as  regards  Morocco,  her 
sudden  aggressive  attitude  toward  France  when 
Japan  had  defeated  the  Russian  forces,  her  re- 
newed attempts  at  aggression  in  1911,  when  the 
solidity  of  the  Anglo-French  entente  might  have 
been  thought  questionable,  her  tremendous  mili- 
tary augmentation  and  great  war  loan  in  1913, — all 
make  it  clear  that  for  years  past  she  has  meditated 
an  aggressive  war  for  the  purpose  of  establishing 
a  European  hegemony,  and  taking  by  violence 
French  and  British  colonial  possessions.  The  sug- 
gestion of  her  responsible  spokesman  that  if  Engr 
land  abandoned  France,  Belgian  neutrality  and 
French  territorial  integrity  would  be  respected,  but 


48  Why  France  is  at  War 

that  no  assurance  could  be  given  as  to  the  French 
colonies,  well  demonstrates  that  the  African  soil 
which  Bismarck  contemptuously  left  "the  Gallic 
cock  to  scratch"  had  grown  into  a  coveted  posses- 
sion for  which  the  German  Empire  was  willing 
to  risk  the  convulsion  of  a  European  war.  The 
effrontery  of  this  suggested  offer  to  England 
to  abandon  France  indicates  that  "Kultur"  does 
not  even  recognize  the  existence  of  moral  preju- 
dice. Sir  M.  de  Bunsen,  in  the  report  to  his 
government,  has  declared  that  a  few  days'  delay 
might  in  all  probability  have  saved  Europe  from 
one  of  the  greatest  calamities  in  history.  This 
delay  was  not  accorded  because  it  was  thought 
the  opportune  moment  to  crush  France  completely 
before  her  too  slow  and  less  prepared  allies  could 
come  to  the  rescue. 

The  consequences  which  must  follow  from  a 
dominant  public  opinion  based  on  militarism  and 
a  philosophy  of  force  are  infinite  in  their  vari- 
ous and  baleful  ramifications.  A  recent  German 
writer,  formerly  in  the  service  of  the  General  Staff, 
so  expresses  himself  in  regard  to  the  United  States : 

Operations  against  the  United  States  of  North 
America  must  be  entirely  different.  With  that 
country,  in  particular,  political  friction,  manifest 
in  commercial  aims,  has  not  been  lacking  in  recent 


Why  France  is  at  War  49 

years,  and  has,  until  now,  been  removed  chiefly 
through  acquiescence  on  our  part.  However  as  this 
submission  has  its  limit,  the  question  arises  as  to 
what  means  we  can  develop  to  carry  out  our  purpose 
with  force,  in  order  to  combat  the  encroachment 
of  the  United  States  upon  our  interests.1 

Perhaps  some  day  the  United  States  will  de- 
serve punishment  from  Teutonic  justice  as  much 
as  did  Belgium.  If  those  dies  ira  should  ever 
come  let  us  hope  she  may  be  better  prepared  than 
she  is  today  to  meet  attack. 

France  is  now  fighting  for  her  homes,  for  her 
civilization,  for  the  place  that  she  has  in  the  world, 
for  her  ideas,  for  all  that  America  fought  for  in 
1776  and  in  1860;  she  is  fighting  a  defensive  strug- 
gle against  a  great  power  which  lives  by  the  prin- 
ciple that  "might  makes  right,"  and  which  has 
for  years  been  seeking  a  pretext  to  strike. 

General  von  Bernhardi  states  it  without  cant : 

In  one  way  or  another  we  must  settle  accounts 
with  France  if  we  are  to  gain  elbow-room  for  our 
own  world-policy.  That  is  the  first  and  most 
absolute  requirement  of  a  sound  German  policy; 
and  inasmuch  as  French  hostility  is  not  to  be  re- 
moved once  for  all  by  pacific  means,  that  must  be 
done  by  force  of  arms.  France  must  be  so  completely 
overthrown  that  it  will  never  get  in  our  way  again.3 

1  Operations  upon  the  Sea,  Freiherr  von  Edelsheim,  p.  86. 
1  Der  ndchste  Krieg,  p.  114;  Eng.  trans.,  p.  105. 


50  Why  France  is  at  War 

If  that  is  not  sufficiently  clear  another  passage 
will  make  it  clearer : 

As  in  1870-71  we  forced  our  way  to  the  coasts 
of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  so  this  time  too  we  must  aim 
at  a  thorough  conquest  in  order  to  possess  ourselves 
of  the  French  naval  ports  and  to  destroy  the  French 
marine  depots.  It  would  be  a  war  to  the  knife 
which  we  should  have  to  fight  out  with  France,  a 
war  which — if  it  succeeded — would  crush  for  ever 
the  position  of  France  as  a  great  power.1 

This,  at  least,  has  the  ring  of  manly  frankness 
and  is  preferable  to  the  pleas  of  apologists  of 
uncertain  nationality  who  would  seek  moral  pre- 
texts for  immoral  acts. 

Nor  does  Germany's  most  prominent  spokesman 
in  America  seem  to  indicate  any  very  different 
attitude.  Quite  recently  he  writes : 

Geographically,  Belgium  does  certainly  belong  to 
the  German  Empire.  She  commands  the  mouth 
of  the  biggest  German  stream.  Antwerp  is  most 
essentially  a  German  port  and  the  main  outlet  of 
the  trade  of  Western  Germany.  That  Antwerp 
should  not  belong  to  Germany  is  as  much  an  anomaly 
as  if  New  Orleans  and  the  Mississippi  delta  had  been 
excluded  from  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  or  as  if  New 
York  had  remained  English  after  the  War  of  Inde- 
pendence. 

*  Der  ndchste  Krieg.,  p.  187;  Eng.  trans.,  p.  165. 


Why  France  is  at  War  51 

Thus  the  "geographical  theory"  may  be  called 
upon  to  do  in  1915  what  the  "race  theory"  did 
in  1871  for  the  spread  of  German  dominion. 

And  again  he  says: 

It  must  be  demanded,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that 
all  of  the  colonial  possessions,  without  exception, 
should  be  returned.  But  her  growing  population 
makes  it  absolutely  imperative  that  Germany  should 
also  get  some  territory  that  could  be  populated  by 
whites.  At  the  present  time  she  has  no  such  colo- 
nies. In  all  the  German  possessions  over  the  sea, 
in  spite  of  efforts  that  have  lasted  for  over  thirty 
years,  less  than  thirty  thousand  white  people,  includ- 
ing military,  have  been  settled.  So  she  must  en- 
deavour to  get  some  such  territory  with  a  climate 
fit  for  her  people.  The  Monroe  Doctrine  (which 
Germany  has  always  recognized  in  letter  as  well  as 
in  spirit)  forbids  our  seeking  expansion  on  this  side 
of  the  water,  either  in  North  or  in  South  America. 
So  we  will  have  to  turn  to  some  such  place  like  Morocco 
— if  it  is  really  fit  for  the  purpose,  which  I  am  un- 
able to  say  at  this  present  time. * 

The  history  of  the  last  forty-three  years  and 
the  initial  stages  of  the  war  should  make  the  truth 
plain  to  every  impartial  mind.  German  diplo- 
macy was  unable  even  to  save  appearances  and 
to  hide  territorial  greed  under  philosophic  for- 
mula. Diplomacy  had  become  the  mere  adjunct 

1  "When  Germany  Wins,"  by  Dr.  Dernburg,  The  Independent, 
vol.  77,  p.  362. 


52  Why  France  is  at  War 

of  the  military.     It  was  unable  to  follow   the 
advice  of  General  Bernhardi : 

Let  it  then  be  the  task  of  our  diplomacy  so  to 
shuffle  the  cards  that  we  may  be  attacked  by  France, 
for  then  there  would  be  reasonable  prospect  that 
Russia  for  a  time  would  remain  neutral. 

Not  only  might  Russia  have  remained  neutral 
in  such  a  contingency,  but  England,  where  public 
opinion  is  dominant,  would  in  all  probability  not 
have  moved.  It  was  only  the  ruthlessness  of  the 
attack  upon  France,  it  was  only  the  cynical  dis- 
regard of  treaties  that,  whatever  may  have  been 
the  feeling  of  British  diplomats,  as  to  National 
interest,  forced  the  peace-loving,  easy-going 
public  of  Great  Britain  into  war. 

France  knew  that  hers  was  the  price  to  pay; 
she  knew  that  it  was  upon  her  soil  that  the  conflict 
would  be  waged,  that  it  was  upon  her  women  and 
upon  her  children  that  the  miseries  of  the  awful 
war  were  to  be  felt  in  their  full  measure.  She 
realized  the  strength  of  the  opponent,  the  annee 
terrible  could  not  be  effaced  from  the  nation's 
memory.  She  had  had  experience  of  the  weakness 
of  democratic  administration,  which  seemed  to 
make  for  unpreparedness  in  war  by  reason  of  the 
tendency  to  pacificism  and  indifference  to  mili- 
tary qualities.  She  knew  that  with  a  population 


Why  France  is  at  War  53 

twice  as  large  as  her  own  and  a  military  organiza- 
tion more  perfect  than  the  world  had  yet  seen  in 
its  infinite  ramification  of  detail,  the  first  shot 
must  carry  the  enemy  over  that  frontier  which  he 
had  himself  so  skilfully  carved  with  a  view  to  its 
future  weakness. 

Military  men  and  some  statesmen  suspected 
that  German  policy,  based  on  German  material- 
istic and  non-moral  philosophy,  would  not  hesitate 
to  destroy  peaceful,  neutralized  Belgium,  in  the 
rush  to  strike  at  France.  But  I  believe  the  mass 
of  French  people  in  the  simplicity  of  their  hearts 
felt  themselves  protected  by  treaty;  the  impossi- 
bility of  obtaining  appropriations  for  adequate 
defence  of  the  Belgian  frontier  indicates  that 
French  public  opinion  had  confidence  in  Ger- 
many's willingness  to  abide  by  its  solemn  treaty 
obligations. 

Frenchmen  did  not  wish  for  war.  They  ac- 
cepted it  as  inevitable;  the  final  certainty  of  the 
calamity  came,  perhaps,  as  a  kind  of  a  relief  after 
the  long  uncertainty  of  years,  when  at  short 
intervals  of  time  the  German  menace  con- 
stantly reappeared.  They,  therefore,  accepted  the 
war  as  a  final  and  inevitable  catastrophe  against 
which  they  must  struggle  to  the  uttermost  or 
die. 


54  Why  France  is  at  War 

France  is  fighting  for  even  more  than  its  own 
national  life. 

France  has  been  the  home  of  ideas  of  liberalism, 
the  forerunner  of  mankind  in  the  great  democratic 
experiments.  Every  nation  whose  people  are 
moving  on  the  road  to  democracy,  to  popular 
government,  and  to  emancipation  from  ancient 
ideas  of  caste  and  of  divine  right,  have  a  direct 
and  immediate  interest  in  France's  fight. 

The  French  are  fighting  today  for  the  same  ideal 
for  which  Lafayette  drew  his  sword.  In  emanci- 
pating themselves  and  regaining  their  complete 
national  autonomy  they  will  be  ridding  Europe 
of  a  dread  hegemony,  freeing  the  unfortunate 
populations  who  have  never  ceased  to  mourn 
their  lost  mother  since  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort, 
and  saving  the  cause  of  every  free  people,  liberty 
and  law,  democracy  and  justice. 


WHAT  ENGLAND  IS  FIGHTING  FOR 
By  FREDERICK  W.  WHITRIDGE 


55 


Copyright,  1906.  by  Marceau.  New  York 


WHAT  ENGLAND  IS  FIGHTING  FOR 

WHEN  I  saw  your  poster  the  other  day  I  feared 
you  were  attributing  to  me  functions  to  which  I 
have  no  pretensions,  for,  except  by  General 
Greene's  nomination,  I  have  no  warrant  to  speak 
for  England.  Like  him,  I  am  one  of  the  original 
Americans  who  crowded  out  the  red  Indians  early 
in  1600.  My  boyhood  traditions  are  of  conversa- 
tions with  Washington ;  a  man  whose  name  I  bear 
served  on  the  quarter-deck  with  John  Paul  Jones; 
and  my  earliest  recollections  are  of  stories  of  those 
American  frigates  and  privateers  which  for  a  time 
seem  to  have  swept  the  English  flag  from  half  the 
seas.  They  did  net  talk  about  it — still  less  did 
they  brag  for  years  about  the  wonderful  things 
they  were  going  to  do,  in  anticipation  of  "The 
Day."  They  simply  went  and  did  it. 

In  my  youth,  also,  I  studied  in  a  German  uni- 
versity. I  left  it  with  admiration  and  affection 
for  the  German  people  and  German  institutions; 
and  I  may  pretend  therefore  that  I  have  an  open 
mind  upon  the  questions  to  be  here  discussed ;  and 

57 


58  Why  England  is  at  War 

that  I  speak  without  prejudice  when  I  say  to  you, 
as  I  do  say,  that  in  this  war  which  has  set  the 
world  on  fire,  in  which  the  roof  of  civilization  seems 
to  have  fallen  in,  it  is  as  clear  to  me  as  the  daylight, 
that  the  institutions  under  which  most  of  us  have 
been  born  and  brought  up,  are  imperilled  by  the 
wanton  breach  of  the  peace  of  the  world  by  the 
German  Empire;  and  the  tales  which  are  told, 
that  the  Germans  are  a  simple,  hard-working, 
God-fearing  people,  who  were  suprised  by  England, 
Russia,  and  France  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
without  warning,  are  both  false  and  ridiculous.  I 
know  of  nobody  who  now  contends  otherwise 
except  that  earnest  but  bewildered  propagandist 
and  seeker  after  the  truth,  Dr.  Dernburg,  who 
got  out  a  pamphlet  on  the  Case  against  Belgium, 
in  which  I  believe  he  proved  that  Belgium  violated 
her  own  neutrality !  But  on  the  first  page  of  that 
pamphlet  there  is  a  refutation  of  his  r  rges — and 
it  has  fallen  absolutely  flat ! 

"What  England  is  fighting  for  "  is  your  question. 
As  I  see  it,  England  is  fighting  for  her  honour  and 
in  defence  of  her  life,  her  institutions,  her  culture, 
her  firesides,  and  the  temples  of  her  gods.  For  her 
honour — you  remember  there  was  a  treaty,  to 
which  England  and  Germany  were  both  parties, 
guaranteeing  the  neutrality  of  Belgium.  When 


W"     Hngland  is  at  War  59 

Belgium  was  invaded,  King  Albert  telegraphed 
to  England  and  asked  for  its  support.  What  was 
England  to  do?  Forty  years  before,  on  the  eve 
of  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  in  1870,  Lord  Gran- 
ville,  then  Mr.  Gladstone's  Foreign  Minister, 
asked  Bismarck  what  the  Germans  were  going  to 
do  about  Belgium.  Bismarck  answered:  "Why 
do  you  ask?  Have  we  not  guaranteed  its  neutral- 
ity? Of  course  we  shall  respect  it."  When  that 
question  was  asked  by  Sir  Edward  Grey  of  the 
Chancellor  von  Bethmann-Hollweg,  last  July,  a 
very  different  answer  was  given.  In  the  famous 
interview  between  Sir  Edward  Goschen,  the  retir- 
ing British  Ambassador,  and  the  Chancellor,  after 
Sir  Edward  Goschen  had  stated  the  British  position, 
the  Chancellor  apparently  lost  his  temper  and  cried 
out:  "You  don't  mean  to  say  you  are  going  to 
fight  us  for  a  scrap  of  paper?  A  scrap  of  paper, 
indeed!"  The  Bill  of  Rights  is  a  scrap  of  paper; 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  as  has  well 
been  said,  is  a  scrap  of  paper;  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  a  scrap  of  paper; — and  the 
world  has  fastened  upon  that  expression  as  con- 
taining the  kernel  of  the  whole  controversy. 

The  question  is  not  whether  a  treaty  may  not 
be  broken — of  course  it  may  be  broken.  But  the 
question  is  whether  a  treaty  is  to  be  regarded  as 


6o  Why  England  is  at  War 

a  mere  move  in  a  game — changed  every  hour  with 
changing  circumstances;  or  whether  it  is  to  be 
regarded  as  a  sacred  contract.  Our  whole  civiliza- 
tion is  based  upon  contracts  and  the  possibility 
of  enforcing  them.  They  are  sometimes  broken; 
but  what  do  we  think  of  people  who  break  them? 
Why,  one  of  the  marks  of  an  honourable  man  is  the 
way  in  which  he  lives  up  to  his  contracts!  So 
when  King  Albert  of  Belgium  appealed  under  the 
treaty  for  assistance,  what  could  England  do  but 
what  any  honourable  man  would  do — endeavour 
to  live  up  to  its  contract — and  declare  war? 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  discuss  with  you,  or  argue 
with  you,  about  who  struck  the  first  blow — I  take 
it  the  American  people  have  pretty  well  made  up 
their  minds  about  that.  We  have  given  judgment 
against  the  Germans,  who  deliberately  repudiated 
their  plighted  word,  and  let  it  be  known  that  a 
solemn  treaty,  into  which  it  had  entered,  is  not 
worth  the  paper  it  is  written  on ! 

The  case  of  Luxemburg,  which  we  have  heard 
very  little  about,  is  even  worse.  A  treaty  between 
Germany  and  Luxemburg,  dated  May  n,  1902, 
provides: 

Article  2.  The  imperial  Government  undertakes 
never  to  use  the  Luxemburg  railroads,  which  are 
protected  under  imperial  adm  nistration  of  the 


Why  England  is  at  War  61 

Alsace-Lorrraine  roads,  for  the  transportation  of 
troops,  or  arms,  of  material  of  war  and  ammuni- 
tion; and  not  to  use,  in  any  war  in  which  Germany 
may  be  involved,  these  roads  for  the  provisioning 
of  troops,  in  any  manner  incompatible  with  the 
neutrality  of  the  Grand  Duchy  in  general ;  and  not 
to  cause  nor  tolerate  in  the  operation  of  those  lines 
any  act  which  might  not  be  in  perfect  accord  with 
the  duties  of  the  Grand  Duchy  as  a  neutral  state. 

That  treaty  has  been  violated  by  Germany 
every  minute  since  the  1st  of  August — and  the 
German  state  of  mind  about  treaties  is  made  plain. 

England,  having  thus  begun  to  fight  for  her 
honour,  must  now  evidently  fight  for  her  life.  In 
the  consideration  of  that  question,  you  must  per- 
mit me  to  tell  you  a  few  things  about  Germany, 
which  Dr.  von  Mach  certainly  will  not  tell  you, 
but  which  are  worth  thinking  about.  Germany 
has  lavished  its  hate  upon  England.  The  only 
touch  of  genius  in  any  of  the  war  productions  is  a 
chant  of  hate  by  Dr.  Lissauer  who  got  the  Red 
Eagle  for  it  the  other  day — a  man  who  ought  to 
be  thinking  of  his  heavenly  home,  but  who  has 
delivered  himself  of  a  poem  which  breathes  a  kind 
of  fury  suggestive  of  a  madhouse. 

I  read,  as  I  came  here  this  morning,  a  long 
account  of  two  lectures  in  Munich  by  a  Berlin  pro* 
fessor  on  the  duty  of  everybody  to  hate  England. 


62  Why  England  is  at  War 

I  never  heard  anything  of  the  same  kind  in 
England.  I  have  sometimes  heard  of  animosity, 
dislike,  and  contempt — but  I  never  heara  anything 
to  compare  with  these  '  man  expressions  of 
hatred. 

Now  let  us  see  the  spirit  with  which  the  Germans 
began  the  war.  The  Lokal  Anzeiger  of  Berlin, 
on  August  3d,  said : 

We  begin  today  the  final  fight  which  shall  settle 
forever  our  great  position  in  the  world,  which  we 
have  never  misused,  and  when  the  German  sword 
glides  again  into  its  scabbard  everything  that  we 
hope  and  wish  will  be  consummated.  We  shall 
stand  before  the  world  as  the  mightiest  nation 
which  will  then,  at  least,  be  in  a  position,  with  its 
moderation  and  forbearance,  to  give  to  the  world 
forever  those  things  for  which  it  has  never  ceased 
to  strive — Peace,  Enlightenment,  and  Prosperity. 

It  will  be  a  great  help  to  us  in  our  struggles 
through  the  world  to  have  the  victorious  Germans 
administer  those  things  to  us.  I  hope  it  will  be 
done  pleasantly  perhaps  in  a  composite  and  sweet- 
ened pill. 

Again,  on  August  i8th,  the  Hamburger  Nach- 
richten,  Bismarck's  old  organ,  said: 

We  have  taken  the  field  against  Russia  and 
France,  but  at  the  bottom  it  is  England  we  are 


Why  England  is  at  War  63 

fighting  everywhere.  We  must  prove  to  Russia 
the  superiority  of  our  culture  and  of  our  military 
might.  We  must  force  France  on  her  knees  until 
she  chokes.  It  is  not  yet  time  to  offer  terms.  But 
between  Russia  and  Germany  there  is  no  insoluble 
problem.  France,  too,  fights  chiefly  for  honour's 
sake.  It  is  from  England  we  must  wring  the 
uttermost  price  for  this  gigantic  struggle,  however 
dearly  others  may  have  to  pay  for  the  help  they 
have  given  her. 

That  is  the  note  which  ran  through  the  whole 
German  press  during  the  months  of  August  and 
September,  while  I  was  in  the  position  to  read  it, 
— all  leading  up  to  the  oft  repeated  phrase:  that 
this  was  the  last  and  final  "Abrechrung"  with 
England.  Nobody  in  England  ever  spoke  of  an 
"Abrechrung"  with  Germany.  Nobody  ever 
thought  there  was  anything  the  Germans  had 
which  they  wanted.  And  yet  you  hear  all  over 
Germany  this  parrot  cry  about  "this  war  which 
was  forced  upon  us  by  the  envy  and  malice  of  our 
enemies."  God  save  the  mark!  Envy  of  the 
Germans!!  Does  anybody  know  for  what? 

As  to  the  way  in  which  the  Germans  are  carrying 
on  the  war,  I  find  in  a  book  called  Usages  of  the 
War,  published  in  1902,  which  is  referred  to 
in  Dr.  Bernhardi's  last  book,  the  statement, 
that— 


64  Why  England  is  at  War 

A  war  cannot  be  conducted  energetically  and  be 
confined  to  attacking  the  combatants  of  the  enemy 
and  its  fortifications.  It  must  at  the  same  time 
be  directed  to  the  destruction  of  the  whole  of  his 
intellectual  and  material  resources.  Human  consid- 
erations— that  is,  the  sparing  of  life  and  property, — 
can  come  into  play  only  in  so  far  as  the  nature  and 
object  of  the  war  permit. 

You  all  know  how  these  doctrines  have  been 
applied  to  Belgium.  No  country  for  three  hun- 
dred years,  at  least,  has  been  ravaged  and  desolated 
like  that  beautiful  land;  and  the  theory  about  it 
has  been  candidly  expressed  in  an  article  by  a 
retired  Major-General  (Disfurth)  in  the  Ham- 
burger Nachrichten,  published  early  in  November, 
which  says: 

No  object  whatever  is  served  by  taking  any  notice 
of  the  accusations  of  barbarity  levelled  against 
Germany  by  our  foreign  critics.  Frankly,  we  are 
and  must  be  barbarians,  if  by  this  we  understand 
those  who  wage  war  relentlessly  and  to  the  utter- 
most degree. 

It  is  incompatible  with  the  dignity  of  the  German 
Empire  and  with  the  proud  traditions  of  the  Prus- 
sian Army  to  defend  our  courageous  soldiers  from 
the  accusations  hurled  against  them  in  foreign 
and  neutral  countries.  We  owe  no  explanations 
to  anyone.  There  is  nothing  for  us  to  justify  and 
nothing  to  explain  away.  Every  act  of  whatever 
nature  committed  by  our  troops  for  the  purpose  of 


Why  England  is  at  War  65 

discouraging,  defeating,  and  destroying  our  enemies 
is  a  brave  act  and  a  good  deed,  and  is  fully 
justified. 

There  is  no  reason  whatever  why  we  should 
trouble  ourselves  about  the  notions  concerning  us 
in  other  countries.  Certainly  we  should  not  worry 
about  the  opinions  and  feelings  held  in  neutral 
countries.  Germany  stands  as  the  supreme  arbiter 
of  her  own  methods,  which  in  the  time  of  war  must 
be  dictated  to  the  world. 

It  is  of  no  consequence  whatever  if  all  the  monu- 
ments ever  created,  all  the  pictures  ever  painted,  and 
all  the  buildings  ever  erected  by  the  great  architects 
of  the  world  be  destroyed,  if  by  their  destruction  we 
promote  Germany's  victory  over  her  enemies,  who 
vowed  her  complete  annihilation.  In  times  of 
peace  we  might  perhaps  regard  the  loss  of  such 
things,  but  at  the  present  moment,  not  a  word  of 
regret,  not  a  thought  should  be  squandered  upon 
them.  War  is  war,  and  must  be  waged  with  sever- 
ity. The  commonest,  ugliest  stone  placed  to  mark 
the  burial-place  of  a  German  Grenadier  is  a  more 
glorious  and  venerable  monument  than  all  the 
cathedrals  in  Europe  put  together. 

They  call  us  barbarians.  What  of  it?  We 
scorn  them  and  their  abuse.  For  my  part,  I  hope 
that  in  this  war  we  have  merited  the  title  of  bar- 
barians. Let  neutral  people  and  our  enemies  cease 
their  empty  chatter,  which  may  well  be  compared  to 
the  twitter  of  birds.  Let  them  cease  their  talk  of 
the  cathedral  at  Rheims  and  of  all  the  churches  and 
all  the  castles  in  France  which  have  shared  its  fate. 
These  things  do  not  interest  us.  Our  troops  must 
achieve  victory.  What  else  matters? 


66  Why  England  is  at  War 

These  are  the  theories  that  the  Germans  are 
reducing  to  practice.  I  know  of  one  case  of  an 
American  lady  who  arrived  in  a  hotel  in  a  frontier 
town  on  the  night  during  which  the  Germans 
entered  Belgium.  She  was  told  that  nobody  must 
open  a  window — the  thermometer  was  ninety— 
under  penalty  of  being  shot.  One  man  was  shot 
in  that  hotel  that  night,  and  the  next  morning 
before  breakfast  four  and  twenty  men  and  women 
were  taken  out,  lined  up,  and  shot.  Leon  Bour- 
geois, the  former  Prime  Minister  of  France,  found 
on  the  cathedral  at  Rheims  this  proclamation, 
signed  by  the  German  authorities: 

In  order  to  secure  the  safety  of  the  troops  and 
in  order  to  ensure  calm  among  the  population  of 
Rheims,  the  persons  named  below  have  been  taken 
as  hostages  by  the  General  in  command  of  the 
German  army  and  will  be  shot  at  the  least  attempt 
at  disorder;  in  addition,  the  town  will  be  entirely 
or  partially  burned  and  the  inhabitants  hanged  if 
a  single  infraction  of  the  preceding  instructions 
occurs. 

This  is  followed  by  the  names  of  some  fifty 
prominent  citizens. 

All  of  this  indicates  a  tremendous  change  in  the 
German  people  since  I  knew  them.  They  have 
grown  rich  and  prosperous,  but  the  old  simplicity 


Why  England  is  at  War  67 

of  life  has  gone,  and  they  are  exhibiting  all  the 
defects  of  a  crude  plutocracy.  They  seem,  more- 
over, to  have  acquired  from  Nietzsche  a  new 
philosophy  which  has  thus  been  summarized : 

Nietzsche  worshipped  power.  His  ethics  were, 
Do,  Be,  Get  everything  you  have  the  strength  to 
get.  Pity  is  a  vice.  Evolution  means  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  and  the  destruction  of  the  unfit. 
Christianity  with  its  sympathy  for  the  poor  in 
spirit  means  decadence  and  is  a  disease.  The  world 
belongs  to  those  who  have  the  might  to  get  it,  and 
treaties,  peace  pacts,  arbitrations,  are  mere  points 
of  strategy  to  mislead  other  nations.  When  the 
grim  reality  of  war  comes  they  all  vanish  and  are 
forgotten.  Indeed,  sympathy  for  the  weak,  the 
suffering,  and  the  power  of  pathos  themselves  are 
weaknesses,  and  might  is  the  ultimate  proof  of  right. 
The  world  belongs  to  those  who  can  get  it,  and  those 
who  have  broken  through  to  these  supermorals 
have  the  world  that  believes  in  the  old-fashioned 
virtues  at  their  mercy. 

Beside  that  new  philosophy  the  German  organi- 
zation has  been  wonderfully  perfected  and  the 
contrast  between  our  theory  that  the  State  belongs 
to  the  individual,  and  the  German  theory  that  the 
individual  belongs  to  the  State  and  is  absorbed 
in  it,  is  very  much  more  accentuated  and  enables 
the  Germans  to  organize  the  army,  civil  life,  and 
even  public  opinion  into  an  almost  perfect  machine 


68  Why  England  is  at  War 

which  transcends  anything  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
But,  my  friends,  did  you  ever  know  of  a  machine 
which  could  think  or  feel,  and  if  it  were  big  enough 
did  not  seem  ruthless  and  inhuman?  That  in- 
capacity to  think,  together  with  the  belief  there  is 
no  other  standard  of  right  than  might,  leads  to 
some  curious  results  and  makes  the  German  ap- 
parently incapable  of  seeing  things  as  they  are, 
even  every-day  facts.  Take  the  little  matter  of 
the  truth.  Nothing  else  than  the  German  in- 
ability to  see  things  as  others  see  them  could 
account  for  the  ceaseless  reiteration  by  the  Ger- 
mans that  they  had  been  surprised.  They  know 
that  is  not  true. 

I  recall  two  similar  cases.  The  other  day  the 
New  York  Times  published  an  account  of  an  inter- 
view with  the  artillery  officer  who  had  charge  of 
the  bombardment  of  the  Rheims  Cathedral,  who 
declared  that  only  two  shots  had  been  fired  at  that 
edifice.  Richard  Harding  Davis,  Mr.  Bacon,  our 
late  Ambassador  to  France,  and  Mr.  Whitney 
Warren,  have  given  us  accounts  of  the  effect  of 
those  two  shots  on  that  cathedral  and  that  town, 
and  from  their  accounts  it  is  perfectly  plain  that 
the  artillery  officer,  interviewed  by  the  Times, 
lied  like  the  devil.  Then  take  these  raids  on  the 
English  coast.  Whenever  these  occur  the  German 


Why  England  is  at  War  69 

authorities  send  out  a  statement  that  the  fortified 
town,  fortress,  or  what  not,  was  attacked  at  such 
and  such  place,  and  they  called  Scarborough  a 
fortified  place.  They  must  know  better  than  that. 
Scarborough  is  no  more  a  fortified  town  than 
Coney  Island,  and  the  five  or  six  villages  between 
it  and  King's  Lynn  upon  which  the  Germans 
dropped  bombs,  I  have  recently  seen,  and  they 
are  as  void  of  offence  or  the  possibility  of  defence 
as  the  children  the  German  bombs  killed.  Perhaps 
these  official  statements  are  covered  by  a  Central 
News  cable  on  January  5th  which  says : 

Admitting  that  the  reports  of  the  war  given  to 
the  public  in  Germany  and  to  neutral  nations  have 
not  always  been  proved  truthful  by  later  develop- 
ments, the  Gazette  justifies  those  circumstances  by 
saying : 

"Circumstances  often  force  one  to  deviate  from 
the  path  of  strict  rectitude,  to  answer  lies  by  lies. 
This  is  the  only  way  to  answer  lies.  When  our 
troops  have  annihilated  them  we  shall  return  to  our 
habit  of  strict  frankness." 

I  thought  I  knew  the  Germans  pretty  well,  but 
this  sort  of  thing  passes  my  comprehension.  The 
enormous  self-satisfaction  of  the  Germans,  with 
their  mighty  organization  and  their  heathen  be- 
liefs, leads  to  two  or  three  other  matters  worthy  of 
consideration. 


70  Why  England  is  at  War 

First,  They  have  slipped  into  a  theatrical, 
cheap  way  of  talking  and  acting.  We  have  all 
heard  of  the  "shining  armour"  and  the  "golden 
helms"  and  the  "virgin  swords,"  and  that  sort 
of  rhodomontade ;  and  when  the  German  expedi- 
tion first  sailed  to  China  to  take  possession  of 
Kiao-Chao,  the  Kaiser  said : 

Remember  when  you  meet  the  foe  that  quarter 
will  not  be  given,  that  prisoners  will  not  be  taken. 
Wield  your  weapons  so  that  for  a  thousand  years 
no  Chinese  will  dare  to  look  askance  at  a  German. 
Pave  the  way  once  for  all  for  civilization.  Make 
yourselves  feared  as  the  Huns  did  under  Attila. 
Good-bye,  my  comrades! 

Suppose,  now,  that  President  Wilson,  when  he 
sent  out  ships  to  Vera  Cruz  last  year  to  avenge  the 
insult  to  the  flag,  which  he  afterwards  condoned, 
had,  at  a  dinner  to  the  commanding  officers, 
raised  his  goblet  of  grape  juice,  and  said:  "May 
every  European  in  those  distant  regions,  may  every 
American  merchant,  and  above  all  may  the  for- 
eigner on  whose  soil  we  are,  or  with  whom  we  shall 
have  to  deal,  be  made  aware  that  the  American 
Michael  has  finally  planted  his  shield  with  the 
device  of  the  American  eagle  upon  the  soil,  in 
order  once  for  all  to  give  his  protection  to  all  who 
may  ask  for  it.  And  may  our  countrymen  in 


Why  England  is  at  War  71 

those  regions,  be  they  merchants  or  be  their 
business  what  it  may,  rest  assured  that  the  protec- 
tion of  the  American  Republic,  implied  by  the 
American  ships  of  war,  will  be  steadily  vouchsafed 
to  them.  But  should  any  one  essay  to  detract 
from  our  just  rights,  or  to  injure  us,  then  up  at 
him  with  your  mailed  fist,  and,  if  it  be  God's  will, 
weave  for  your  youthful  brow  a  wreath  of  laurel 
which  no  one  in  all  the  American  Republic  will 
begrudge  you." 

And  suppose  Brother  Bryan,  on  behalf  of  the 
fleet,  had  thereupon  responded : 

"Most  August  President,  Most  Mighty  Chief 
and  Lord,  Illustrious  Brother, — One  aim  draws 
me  on — it  is  to  declare  in  foreign  lands  the  gospel 
of  your  hallowed  person,  to  preach  it  to  everyone 
who  will  hear,  and  also  to  those  who  will  not  hear 
it." 

I  take  it  everybody  would  have  said  that  Presi- 
dent Wilson  and  Brother  Bryan  had  suddenly 
become  daft,  wouldn't  they?  Yet,  these  are  the 
identical  words  used  by  the  Kaiser  and  his  brother 
at  the  time  of  the  dispatch  of  this  expedition. 
How  cheap  it  all  sounds !  It  is  like  these  air  raids 
on  pleasure  resorts  and  fishing  villages  on  the 
shores  of  the  North  Sea,  and  the  submarine  attacks 
on  travellers  and  trading  vessels.  They  are  of 


72  Why  England  is  at  War 

little  military  importance;  they  kill  a  few  women 
and  children,  and  now  and  then  an  old  man;  but 
the  whole  performance  reminds  me  of  nothing  so 
much  as  the  Chinese  armour  you  see  in  museums, 
painted  with  demon-like  faces,  horns,  red  tongues, 
and  formerly  used  by  the  Chinese  troops  in  the 
naive  belief  that  the  enemy  would  be  terrified 
thereby. 

Second,  The  Germans  are  obsessed  with  the 
delusion  that  they  ought  to  have  colonies  and 
could  manage  a  colonial  empire.  The  loudly  in- 
creasing cry  in  Germany  for  the  past  few  years  that 
she  must  have  a  place  in  the  sun,  means  that  she 
intends  to  get  somebody  else's  place  some  where. 
I  at  first  thought  it  meant  we  must  allow  without 
demur  the  individual  German  to  steal  our  seats 
in  the  railway  carriages  and  hustle  and  crowd  our 
daughters  away  from  their  places  in  foreign  gal- 
leries, but  it  really  means  that  Germany  must  have 
great  colonies  which  can  relieve  the  pressure  of  her 
population  and  where  the  emigrants  can  still  re- 
main German  and  find,  as  Bernhardi  says,  a  Ger- 
man way  of  living.  Had  it  been  written  in  the 
Book  of  Fate  that  the  Germans  were  to  be  a 
colonial  power,  they  would  have  had  their  colonies 
long  ago — that  is,  the  Germans  would  have  gone 
out  into  the  waste  places  in  the  world,  settled  and 


Why  England  is  at  War  73 

improved  them,  and  the  flag  of  the  Fatherland 
would  have  followed  them.  This  they  did  not  do, 
and,  now  that  the  earth  is  fully  occupied,  the  only 
way  in  which  she  can  get  this  particular  place 
under  the  sun  is  by  somehow  or  other  getting 
possession  of  what  belongs  to  somebody  else. 
Conquest  is  an  intelligible  way  to  go  about  it  and 
is  apparently  one  of  the  purposes  of  the  present 
enterprise,  but  the  German  Government  has 
apparently  had  other  ways  in  mind.  The  German 
interests  in  Morocco,  for  instance,  were  few  and 
unimportant,  yet,  a  short  time  ago,  if  Professor 
Usher  is  correct,  the  German  Government  en- 
deavoured to  get  into  that  country  through 
agents  provocateurs  in  a  way  which  was  as  crooked 
and  foolish,  as  Admiral  Diedrich's  performances  in 
Manila  Bay  were  stupid. 

Let  us  suppose,  however,  the  Germans  had  their 
colonies.  I  consider  that  the  German  theory  of 
government  by  force  and  the  consequent  German 
theory  of  regulating  everything  public  and  private 
— I  have  known  a  German  policeman  to  stop  a 
young  American  from  whistling  quietly  on  the 
street — are  incompatible  with  the  elasticity  and 
tact  essential  in  colonial  administration,  and,  so 
far  as  one  can  judge,  the  Germans  would  be  sure 
to  make  a  mess  of  their  colonies.  The  filthy 


74  Why  England  is  at  War 

scandals  of  Dr.  Carl  Peters  and  the  expense  and 
troubles  of  the  Herero  War  are  not  forgotten,  and 
I  remember  that  when  Germany  got  one  of  the 
Samoan  Islands  there  was  the  greatest  difficulty 
in  getting  the  Samoans,  who  were  oiling  themselves 
in  the  sun,  to  understand  that  when  a  German 
officer  appeared  they  must  stand  up  and  salute. 

The  main  difficulty,  however,  with  the  German 
colonies  would  be  the  Germans  themselves.  When 
they  go  out  into  the  great  world  they  do  not  want, 
as  Bernhardi  says,  to  find  a  German  way  of  living, 
but  they  want  to  find  a  better  way.  I  heard 
recently  from  a  friend  of  a  case  in  point.  He  met 
a  German  merchant  in  one  of  the  towns  of  British 
South  Africa  and  said  to  him:  "What  are  you 
doing  here?  I  should  think  you  would  be  at  such 
and  such  a  place  " — the  capital  town  of  the  nearest 
German  colony.  The  German  replied: 

I  went  there,  and  when  I  got  out  at  the  station 
there  was  a  German  sentry  with  a  gun.  When  I 
went  to  the  Commissioner's  house  there  was  another 
sentry  with  a  gun.  After  I  got  into  the  house, 
there  was  a  large  room  all  full  of  German  red  tape. 
So  I  got  away  and  came  here,  where  I  have  done 
very  well. 

The  fact  seems  to  be  that  the  Prussian  discipline 
which  has  been  so  exalted  has  done  its  work  and 


Why  England  is  at  War  75 

has  overdone  it — there  are  three  suicides  in  Berlin 
to  one  in  London.  When  a  German  escapes  from 
under  that  discipline  he  never  again  subjects  him- 
self to  its  thralls,  and  one  of  the  most  curious  things 
to  be  noted  in  a  general  survey  of  the  world  is 
that  among  all  of  the  millions  of  Germans  who  have 
left  the  Fatherland  since  1848  for  this  country  so 
very  few  of  them  ever  go  back  to  Germany.  It  is 
not  only  that  they  better  themselves  materially, 
but  they  get  a  taste  for  the  sort  of  freedom  they 
never  got  at  home.  A  good  many  German  mer- 
cenaries, who  enlisted  here  during  the  Civil  War 
for  the  sake  of  the  high  bounties  we  paid  for 
recruits,  went  back  and  are  living  on  their  pen- 
sions, and  a  few  international  bankers  who  never 
struck  root  here  have  gone  back,  but  in  a  large 
acquaintance  I  have  heard  of  only  one  instance 
where  a  German  who  had  prospered  returned  to 
pass  his  old  age  at  home.  That  was  the  case  of  a 
brewer  who  had  made  a  few  hundred  thousand 
dollars  and  then  built  for  himself  a  house  in  the 
German  district  whence  he  had  emigrated,  such  as 
his  boyhood's  fancy  had  pictured  he  would  have 
in  his  old  age,  and  into  that  house  he  moved  to  end 
his  days.  At  the  end  of  two  months  he  locked  the 
front  door,  and  said,  "By  God!  I  can't  stand  it 
another  minute," — and  came  back  to  his  place  in 


76  Why  England  is  at  War 

the  Middle  West.  He  did  not  like  what  he 
thought  was  the  continual  interference  and  med- 
dling in  his  private  affairs. 

Many  years  ago  I  was  concerned  in  the  establish- 
ment in  this  city  of  a  system  of  free  circulating 
libraries,  and  one  evening  the  late  Mr.  Oswald 
Ottendorfer,  the  founder  and  owner  of  the  Staats- 
Zeitung  in  this  city  sent  for  me  and  two  of  my 
associates  and  said  he  had  been  interested  in  our 
work,  and  proposed  to  give  us  a  library,  and  stock 
it  with  German  books.  He  went  on  to  say: 

I  intend  to  attach  to  this  gift  one  condition.  I  do 
not  deceive  myself  about  my  people  at  all.  I  am  a 
German,  and  as  long  as  there  is  German  immigra- 
tion into  this  country  there  will  be  a  German 
element  here,  but  as  immigration  ceases  the  German 
element  will  pass  away.  The  Germans  forget  their 
language,  do  not  keep  up  their  ties  with  the  old 
country,  and  in  time  they  will  as  a  distinct  element 
cease  to  exist.  I  hope  we  shall  contribute  to  the 
ultimate  American  some  qualities  of  thoroughness, 
honesty,  and  good  citizenship,  but  as  an  element 
we  shall  cease  to  be.  And  the  condition  which  I 
have  attached  to  this  gift  is  that  a  large  vault  I 
have  placed  in  the  cellar  shall  be  maintained  as  a 
place  where  the  records  of  the  German  societies 
as  they  gradually  die  shall  be  preserved. 

That  library  has  long  since  been  amalgamated 
with  the  great  public  library  of  New  York.  The 


Why  England  is  at  War  77 

vault  is  maintained,  and  I  believe  the  records  of 
one  or  two  German  societies  are  already  in  it.  Mr. 
Ottendorfer  was  right.  The  Germans  in  America 
are  among  the  best,  sanest,  and  most  valuable  of 
our  citizens,  but  the  Germans  are  of  all  people 
the  least  tenacious  of  their  nationality.  In  this 
country  the  English,  Scotch,  and  even  the  Irish 
speak  of  "home"  for  generations.  The  Scan- 
dinavians charter  ships  to  go  "home"  to  spend 
their  Christmas ;  numbers  of  them  who  prosper  go 
back  to  pass  their  old  age.  The  Slavs  go  back  by 
thousands,  and  have  carried  the  English  language 
with  them,  so  much  so  that  in  one  case  an  election 
for  the  Reichsrath  in  Austria  was  conducted  in 
that  language.  The  Italians  go  back  by  tens  of 
thousands,  and  you  can  hardly  find  a  town  in 
Italy  in  which  some  one  is  not  living  in  a  little 
vineyard  or  villino  who  made  his  money  in  Amer- 
ica. But,  as  I  have  said,  the  Germans  practical- 
ly never  go  back.  They  become  Americans, 
just  as  they  become  Australians  in  Australia, 
where  they  are  supporting  their  new  country 
against  the  old,  or  they  become  Brazilians,  Chil- 
ians, or  Central  Americans,  and  a  German  col- 
onial empire  is  unthinkable.  If  it  were  established 
by  theft,  conquest,  and  force,  it  would  be  fore- 
ordained to  failure  because  the  Germans  on  for- 


78  Why  England  is  at  War 

eign  soil  are  apparently  anxious  to  cease  being 
German. 

Third,  Take  the  case  of  Belgium.  The  Ger- 
mans seem  utterly  incapable  of  understanding 
what  they  have  done  in  that  country,  or  what  is 
thought  of  it.  I  need  not  dwell  on  the  horrors 
which  have  been  wrought  in  that  unhappy  land. 
Read  Cardinal  Mercier's  letter  if  you  want  to  know 
about  it.  The  plain  truth  is,  Belgium  has  been 
outraged  and  violated  by  the  German  Empire,  and 
because  she  refused  the  silver  Germany  offered  as 
the  price  of  her  honour,  she  was  flung  upon  the 
streets,  literally  to  starve.  Her  assailant  has 
allowed  one  State  after  another  of  this  Union  to 
send  a  cargo  of  food  to  the  Belgians  she  has  robbed 
and  despoiled.  What  can  they  be  thinking  about? 
And  now  on  top  of  all  this,  the  German  authorities 
in  Belgium  are  allowed  to  defend  themselves 
against  the  German  charge  of  too  great  leniency. 
Think  of  it!!  German  leniency  in  Belgium! 

The  New  York  Times  publishes  a  despatch  saying : 

The  German  semi-official  organ,  The  North 
German  Gazette,  published,  on  January  2,  a  long 
article  from  Brussels  defending  the  German  military 
authorities  in  Belgium  from  the  charge  of  undue 
leniency  to  the  Belgian  population.  The  following 
are  some  salient  passages : 

"A  strong  hand  must  combine  with  a  just  spirit 


Why  England  is  at  War  79 

to  govern  a  country  under  the  conditions  now  exist- 
ing in  Belgium.  Every  exaggerated  form  of  mild- 
ness and  all  sentimentality  must  be  avoided  and 
will  be  avoided,  but  true  strength  will  always  be 
just;  it  will  be  rigid  if  need  be,  but  never  unneces- 
sarily harsh.  Adherence  to  such  principles  is  in 
the  conqueror's  own  interest. 

"The  German  Government  in  Belgium  is  doing 
its  utmost  to  restore  old-time  economic  conditions 
and  to  give  the  working  classes  employment  and 
bread,  not  in  order  to  be  kind  to  Belgium,  but  to 
avert  the  possibility  of  famine  and  disease  behind 
the  front  of  our  army  endangering  its  security  and 
health.  Germany  has,  therefore,  gladly  permitted 
provisions  to  be  brought  in  from  neutral  countries 
in  order  to  spare  domestic  supplies  and  preserve 
our  troops  from  shortage  of  supplies. 

"Critics  of  our  mildness  should  ask  themselves 
how  Belgium  is  to  perform  the  financial  obligations 
laid  upon  her  if  her  life  nerves  are  crippled.  It  is 
the  right  of  the  victor  and  a  duty  to  his  own  army, 
to  compel  the  country  to  pay  money  tribute  which 
without  prejudice  to  a  later  war  indemnity  shall  be 
taken  from  the  country  in  the  form  of  contributions. 

"We  now  demand  the  payment  by  Belgium  of 
600,000,000  francs  within  a  year.  In  the  eyes  of 
many  people  this  sum  seems  ridiculously  small.  In 
truth,  however,  it  represents  the  present  outside 
limit  of  the  financial  capacity  of  Belgium  which  has 
suffered  so  heavily  from  the  war. " 

That  is,  they  ask  only  for  everything  they  can 
possibly  get. 


8o  Why  England  is  at  War 

The  conscience  of  the  whole  civilized  world  has 
been  stirred  as  never  before  by  the  German  pro- 
ceedings in  Belgium.  We  pour  out  our  charity 
now,  but  by-and-bye,  we  shall  applaud  whatever 
vengeance  may  be  exacted. 

Fourth,  Germany  has  hugged  to  herself  the 
most  foolish  delusions  about  her  antagonists. 
England  they  thought  a  decadent  power,  they 
believed  there  would  be  civil  war  in  Ireland,  rebel- 
lion in  India,  Egypt,  and  South  Africa,  and  they 
absolutely  cannot  understand  how  it  is  that  none 
of  these  things  has  happened.  Their  god  of  force 
seems  only  a  tin  god.  They  will  not  understand 
that  in  India  there  are  270,000,000  people  governed 
by  only  eight  hundred  white  men  who  have  been 
lavish  in  their  offers  of  support;  that  in  Canada, 
Australia,  and  colonies  all  over  the  globe  which  are 
bound  to  the  mother  country  by  little  more  than 
a  flag  and  a  language,  there  have  been  poured  out 
money  and  men  to  resist  their  precious  "Kultur." 
The  machine-made  public  opinion  of  Germany 
falls  down  in  the  endeavour  to  account  for  these 
wonders,  and  shrieks  in  hate  over  the  peoples  who 
work  them. 

I  know  only  one  man  who  seems  to  see  clearly 
and  be  willing  to  speak  and  acclaim  the  brut- 
al truth  about  his  country  and  his  people — 


Why  England  is  at  War  81 

that   is  Maximilian    Harden,   the  editor  of   the 
Zukunft. 

Let  us  drop  [he  says]  our  miserable  attempts  to 
excuse  Germany's  action.  Not  against  our  will  and 
as  a  nation  taken  by  surprise  did  we  hurl  ourselves 
into  this  gigantic  venture.  We  willed  it.  We  had 
to  will  it.  We  do  not  stand  before  the  judgment 
seat  of  Europe.  We  acknowledge  no  such  jurisdic- 
tion. Our  might  shall  create  a  new  law  in  Europe. 
It  is  Germany  that  strikes.  When  she  has  con- 
quered new  domains  for  her  genius  then  the  priest- 
hoods of  all  the  gods  will  praise  the  God  of  War. 

Germany  is  not  [he  continues]  making  this  war 
to  punish  sinners  or  to  free  oppressed  peoples,  and 
then  to  rest  in  the  consciousness  of  disinterested 
magnanimity.  She  sets  out  from  the  immovable 
conviction  that  her  achievements  entitle  her  to 
demand  more  elbow  room  on  the  earth  and  wider 
outlets  for  her  activity. 

Germany's  hour  has  struck  [he  says]  and  she 
must  take  her  place  as  the  leading  power.  Any 
peace  which  does  not  secure  her  the  first  position 
would  be  no  reward  for  her  efforts. 

That  is  the  state  of  mind  England  is  fighting. 
It  is  maintained  by  the  Germans  with  unexampled 
ardour,  and  fight  England  must  if  she  would  live. 

Now,  my  friends,  I  have  said  as  much  about  this 
hideous  struggle  as  I  have  time  to  say,  and,  so 
far  as  possible,  I  have  presented  the  situation  in 
the  language  of  the  Germans  themselves.  I  find 

6 


82  Why  England  is  at  War 

it  pathetic  that  the  Germans,  about  whom  I  feel 
as  I  should  about  an  old  friend  who  has  gone  out  of 
his  mind,  should  be  guilty  of  such  dreadful  delu- 
sions, and  to  be  so  incapable  of  understanding  what 
people  must  think  of  them.  I  feel  that  it  is  neces- 
sary for  the  future  peace  of  the  world,  for  the 
preservation  of  small  nations,  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  kind  of  liberty  we  enjoy,  and  in  order  that 
popular  government  should  not  perish  from  the 
earth,  that  the  Germans  should  not  be  destroyed 
but  should  be  confessedly  and  decidedly  whipped. 
I,  in  my  youth,  lived  through  the  Civil  War, 
which  was  fought  for  four  weary  years  for  the 
destruction  of  human  slavery,  and  I  hope  I  shall 
live  long  enough  to  see  this  war  carried  on  until 
the  Prussian  militarism  and  the  pagan  creeds  be- 
hind it  which  holds  in  slavery  the  mind  of  a  great 
people  shall  be  absolutely  destroyed.  When  I 
think  of  the  precious  lives  which  have  gone,  and  of 
the  other  young  lives  which  are  to  go  before  that 
end  can  be  reached,  it  nevertheless  seems  to  me, 
heart-breaking  though  it  be,  that  the  sacrifice  is 
worth  while  if  it  can  accomplish  that  purpose, 
prevent  the  recurrence  for  the  next  generation  of 
a  peace  which  is  only  an  armed  and  extravagant 
peace,  and  enable  mankind  to  go  on  with  its 
appointed  labours. 


WHAT  GERMANY  IS  FIGHTING  FOR 
By  DR.  EDMUND  VON  MACH 


Photo  by  Marceau.  Boston 


WHAT  GERMANY  IS  FIGHTING  FOR1 

IN  the  first  place,  I  wish  to  thank  the  presiding 
officer  for  his  last  remarks,  because  every  German- 
American  feels  that  the  very  moment  he  swears 
allegiance  to  his  new  country,  that  is  the  country 
which  is  for  him  uber  alles.  And  then  I  wish  to 
thank  also  you,  Sir  [turning  to  Mr.  Whitridge], 
for  the  tribute  which,  perhaps  unintentionally, 
you  have  bestowed  on  the  Americans  of  German 
descent  of  whom  you  said,  that  they  always 
become  passionately  attached  to  their  new  homes. 
I  am  only  sorry  that  I  cannot  return  this  compli- 
ment in  kind.  Two  years  ago  the  British  Consul 
in  Boston  told  one  of  his  colleagues  that  he  had 
in  his  consular  district  600,000  British  subjects  who 
had  no  intention  of  taking  part  in  the  political 
life  of  our  country  or  of  becoming  American 

1  Some  of  the  arguments  of  this  address  are  based  on  Dr.  von 
Mach's  previous  writings,  notably  his  "German  Viewpoint" 
in  the  Wednesday  editions  of  the  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  and 
his  book,  What  Germany  Wants,  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  publishers, 
who  have  kindly  permitted  the  use  of  some  of  the  copyrighted 
material  of  Dr.  von  Mach's  book. 

85 


86  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

citizens.  Many  of  these  British  subjects  have 
connected  themselves  with  the  staffs  of  our  great 
Eastern  newspapers,  and  are  found  on  our  college 
faculties.  This  fact  you  should  remember,  when 
you  read  your  newspapers,  and  hear  of  pro- 
English  college  faculties.  In  every  case  you 
should  ask  yourselves  how  many  of  these  writers 
and  orators  are  British  subjects,  unable  to  speak 
from  an  American  heart,  and  capable  only  of  giv- 
ing voice  to  their  political  hatred  of  the  German 
Empire. 

If  I  were  not  an  American,  but  just  simply  a 
German,  I  should  not  deign  to  reply  to  these  two 
eloquent  gentlemen  and  what  they  have  told  you. 
For  qui  s' excuse  s'accuse,  and  Germany  needs  no 
defence.  As  an  American,  however,  I  feel  it  my 
duty  to  tell  my  fellow-citizens  that  they  are  griev- 
ously mistaken.  A  public  opinion  which  is  based 
on  falsehoods  may  ruin  a  nation.  And  I  want  to 
see  America  thrive. 

Mr.  Coudert  has  given  evidence  of  that  wonder- 
ful French  eloquence  which  can  make  a  brilliant 
case  although  the  facts  on  which  it  should  be  based 
are  lacking.  No  people  know  better  than  the  men 
and  women  of  Buffalo  that  he  was  mistaken  when 
he  claimed  that  the  inhabitants  of  Alsace  had  been 
and  still  were  French  to  the  core.  How  many 


Why  Germany  is  at  War          87 

people  from  Alsace  came  here  in  the  fifties,  long 
before  the  German  annexation  of  1871?  Was  not 
Mr.  Haberstro  from  Alsace?  Did  he  not  found  in 
Buffalo — what?  A  French-American  bank?  No, 
a  German-American  bank.  And  all  the  other 
people  who  came  from  Alsace,  and  founded  a 
German  singing  society,  the  Orpheus,  did  they 
call  themselves  French?  By  -no  means.  And 
why  not?  Because  they  were  and  always  had 
been  German  at  heart.  Politically  they  were 
French  at  that  time,  because  Louis  XIV. — and 
inadvertently  the  eloquent  speaker,  in  going  from 
the  present  time  to  the  orang-outang,  forgot  to 
stop  with  Louis  XIV. — because  Louis  XIV.  went 
over  the  border  and  stole  those  beautiful  provinces 
from  Germany.  When  in  1871  Germany  took 
them  back  again,  she  had  the  moral  right  to  do  so, 
but  I  fully  agree  that  there  was  a  momentous 
question  which  had  to  be  decided,  because  in  this 
world  if  we  never  made  any  changes,  then,  as  the 
previous  speaker  has  said,  we  should  still  be  living 
at  the  level  of  the  orang-outang. 

The  restoration  of  these  provinces  to  Germany, 
who  believed  it  to  be  an  act  not  only  of  justice 
but  also  of  necessity,  raised  the  question  whether 
Germany  would  be  able  to  govern  them  to  their 
own  satisfaction.  Has  she  done  this?  Mr.  Cou- 


88  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

dert's  eloquence  says  No.  The  facts,  however, 
— and  I  would  rather  base  my  case  on  facts  than 
on  rhetoric, — say  Yes.  Alsace-Lorraine  elects 
fifteen  delegates  to  the  Reichstag.  At  first,  in 
1873,  only  one  man  was  elected  who  represented  a 
distinctly  German  party.  The  others  preferred 
to  call  themselves  more  or  less  French.  In  the 
last  election  to  the  Reichstag  two  French  and 
thirteen  German  delegates  were  elected !  With  this 
statement  I  believe  I  can  leave  this  question,  and 
consider  it  answered  in  the  affirmative. 

It  was  exceedingly  interesting  to  sit  here  ana 
wait  for  the  proofs  of  that  terrible  accusation  which 
Mr.  Coudert  made  against  Germany.  I  was  wait- 
ing to  hear  him  quote  the  facts  from  the  official 
French  Yellow  Book  but,  so  far  as  Mr.  Coudert 
was  concerned,  Mr.  Jules  Cambon  might  have 
saved  himself  the  trouble  of  editing  the  official 
dispatches  by  which  the  French  Government  had 
hoped  to  prove  its  case.  This  was  significant,  for, 
as  you  may  have  noticed,  the  French  Yellow  Book 
has  been  entirely  dismissed  of  late,  although  its 
first  publication  was  heralded  as  a  godsend  for 
the  British  and  French  advocates  who  wished  to 
bolster  up  their  cases  with  facts.  There  are  enough 
facts  in  the  French  Yellow  Book,  but  they  do  not 
jibe  with  the  British  Blue  Book,  and  the  edict 


Why  Germ.any  is  at  War  89 

seems  to  have  been  issued  to  ignore  the  Yellow 
Book.  You  will  find  no  mention  of  it  in  any  pro- 
British  paper,  not  even  the  one  which  the  previous 
speaker  regards  with  so  much  veneration. 

Why  is  it  that  the  French  Yellow  Book  has  dis- 
appeared? Because  an  eloquent  Frenchman,  M. 
Jules  Cambon,  who  happened  to  be  thoroughly 
mad  at  the  time,  edited  it.  He  was  eagerly  looking 
for  any  dispatches  that  might  contain  anti- 
German  statements,  and  was  so  hypnotized  by  his 
hatred  of  Germany  that  he  could  not  see  anything 
but  what  was  anti-German.  Dispatch  after 
dispatch,  therefore,  was  included  in  this  garland 
of  truth  and  fiction  which  contains  the  most 
damaging  admissions  to  the  pro-ally  cause.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  French  Yellow  Book J  proves  that 
Germany  is  absolutely  innocent.  And  everything 
that  the  first  speaker  has  said  about  Germany  being 
the  aggressor,  is  proved,  on  the  very  records  of  the 
Frenchmen  themselves,  to  have  been  in  error. 

Let  us  mention  just  one  thing.  The  French 
Yellow  Book  makes  this  statement:  "All  Germans 
resent  our  having  taken  their  share  in  Morocco" — 
a  mere  diplomatic  dispatch  from  the  French 
Embassy  in  Berlin  to  the  head  of  the  Foreign  Office 

1  For  a  full  discussion  of  the  Yellmo  Book  see  the  Boston  Eve. 
Transcript,  Feb.  3,  10,  and  17,  1915. 


90  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

in  Paris,  "All  Germans  resent  our  having  taken 
their  share  in  Morocco!"  To  me  that  does  not 
look  as  if  Germany  had  threatened  France  in  the 
Morocco  case,  and  as  if  Germany  had  been  trying 
to  get  away  from  France  that  soil  which  "under 
the  scratching  of  the  proud  Gallic  Cock  had 
suddenly  turned  fertile." 

The  speaker  also  made  the  statement  that 
Germany  had  attacked  France.  It  is  quite  true 
that  Sir  Edward  Grey,  in  No.  105  of  his  Blue  Book, 
adds,  as  No.  3,  a  dispatch  from  Paris  which  tells 
how  the  wicked  Germans  had  attacked  France, 
but  most  unfortunately  for  Sir  Edward  Grey  his 
dispatch  was  dated  July  3Oth,  and  the  French 
letter  which  he  enclosed,  and  by  which  he  hoped  to 
prove  his  case,  was  dated  July  3ist.  After  he 
had  published  these  letters  he  noticed  his  mistake, 
and  therefore  omitted  the  date  of  the  French 
dispatch  of  July  3ist  in  the  second  edition  of  the 
Blue  Book.  But  after  the  second  edition  had 
been  issued,  it  was  noticed  that  another  mistake 
had  been  made,  because  the  dispatch  itself  con- 
tained the  words  "yesterday,  Friday."  There- 
fore in  the  next  edition  Sir  Edward  Grey  ordered 
"Friday"  crossed  out.  But  even  this  left  the 
dispatch  inaccurate,  because  it  referred  to  the 
mobilization  of  Germany  as  having  taken  place  on 


Why  Germany  is  at  War  91 

"Saturday,  the  very  day  on  which  the  Austrian 
note  was  handed  in."  Unfortunately  this  note 
was  not  presented  on  Saturday,  but  on  Thursday. 
In  the  fourth  edition,  therefore,  which  Sir  Edward 
Grey  published,  he  had  to  print  a  little  footnote 
which  said  that  Saturday  was  written,  but  that,  of 
course,  Thursday  was  meant. 

It  is  really  amusing  that  such  things  should 
happen  in  a  book  by  which  the  previous  speaker 
and  the  Hon.  Mr.  Beck  swear  as  if  it  contained 
the  gospel  truth.  But  it  is  not  amusing  that 
intelligent  people  should  go  on  believing  in  such 
documents  when  a  little  study  would  reveal  their 
untrustworthiness.  And  by  no  stretch  of  the 
imagination  can  we  condone  the  procedure  which 
attempts  to  doctor  an  important  document  whi^h 
is  supposed  to  place  the  responsibility  for  the  war. 
To  me  the  falsification  of  this  dispatch  means  that 
there  is  absolutely  no  truth  in  it;  and  there  is 
fortunately  one  other  definite  indication  that 
even  France  knew  that  Germany  had  not  begun 
mobilizing  on  July  3Oth.  While  the  French  Yellow 
Book  is  full  of  those  dispatches,  beginning  with 
about  July  27th,  which  claim  that  German  troops 
are  gathering  here  and  troops  are  gathering  there, 
and  that  Germany  is  mobilizing  and  France  is 
going  to  be  attacked,  and  while  those  dispatches 


92  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

were  collected  and  sent  over  to  Sir  Edward  Grey, 
with  the  request  that  he  present  them  to  his 
Cabinet  and  induce  Great  Britain  to  join  France 
in  a  war  against  Germany,  there  is,  fortunately 
for  the  lovers  of  truth,  one  dispatch  which  proves 
that  Viviani  at  least,  the  French  Premier,  knew  that 
the  other  dispatches  were  lies,  every  one  of  them. 
The  dispatch  to  which  I  refer  is  No  101  of  the 
Yellow  Book,  a  message  from  M.  Viviani  to  his 
Ambassador  in  St.  Petersburg,  which  says  that 
Russia  "should  take  no  immediate  steps  which 
might  offer  to  Germany  a  pretext  for  the  total  or 
partial  mobilization  of  her  forces."  In  other 
words,  on  July  3Oth  M.  Viviani  knew  that  Ger- 
many had  not  begun  even  a  partial  mobiliza- 
tion, and  yet  he  sent  these  lying  dispatches  to 
Great  Britain,  and  it  is  these  dispatches  which 
Sir  Edward  Grey  presented  to  the  British 
Cabinet ! 

What  would  the  French  not  give  if  they  could 
recall  this  one  damaging  dispatch,  for  it  has  let 
in  the  vigorous  breath  of  truth,  and  has  shattered 
at  one  blow  the  carefully  reared  structure  of  false- 
hoods which  represented  the  Germans  as  mobiliz- 
ing long  before  they  did.  But  there  are  other 
and  even  more  damaging  dispatches  which  throw 
a  light  upon  the  French  and  English  dealings  in  the 


Why  Germany  is  at  War  93 

last  days  before  the  war  which  must  fill  every 
honest  pro-ally  with  shame. 

You  remember  how  the  story  goes,  in  dates, 
according  to  the  Blue  Book.  On  August  1st  the 
German  Ambassador  came  to  Sir  Edward  Grey 
and  said,  "If  we  promise  not  to  do  this  and  this, 
will  you  stay  neutral?"  Sir  Edward  Grey  was 
unwilling  to  enter  into  any  agreement.  Finally 
Germany  said,  "Cannot  you  offer  any  terms 
under  which  Great  Britain  will  stay  out  of  the 
war?" 

Has  it  occurred  to  you  to  inquire  why  Sir 
Edward  Grey  did  not  say,  "Yes,  if  you  do  not  go 
through  Belgium  we  will  stay  out?"  That  is 
what  England  did  in  1870.  If  Belgium  really  was 
the  casus  belli  for  Sir  Edward  Grey,  why  didn't 
he  say  that?  What  was  Sir  Edward  Grey's 
answer?  Sir  Edward  Grey  said,  in  substance,  on 
August  ist,  according  to  his  Blue  Book:  "I 
cannot  bind  myself.  We  must  keep  our  hands 
free."  And  on  August  2d,  in  the  afternoon,  the 
British  Cabinet  voted  to  go  with  France,  and  on 
August  3d  there  came  that  magnificent  speech  of 
Sir  Edward  Grey  in  Parliament,  in  which  he  an- 
nounced the  decision  of  the  Cabinet  of  the  pre- 
vious day. 

Now  please  turn  to  the  French  Yellow  Bookt 


94  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

and  watch  the  course  of  events.  On  July  3 1st, 
Sir  Edward  Grey  gave  his  personal  promise  to 
Paul  Cambon,  the  French  Ambassador,  that  he 
would  support  France  in  this  war,  and  then  he 
went  to  the  Cabinet  meeting  where  the  greatest 
surprise  was  in  store  for  him,  for  the  British 
Cabinet,  with  Morley  and  Burns  still  present, 
voted  against  going  to  war!  And  what  happened 
then?  Search  through  the  Blue  Book,  search 
through  the  Yellow  Book.  Up  to  that  moment 
Belgium  had  not  been  mentioned,  but  at  this 
juncture  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  Paul  Cambon  put 
their  heads  together  and  said,  it  seems:  "Let  us 
frighten  Germany  with  Belgium,  let  us  get  the 
Belgian  question  up  and  we  may  be  able  to  swing 
the  Cabinet."  Now  for  the  first  time  Belgium 
appears,  and  the  question  is  put  to  France  and 
Germany,  "What  do  you  intend  to  do  in  this  par- 
ticular war  as  regards  Belgium?" 

On  August  ist  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  Paul 
Cambon  met  again.  It  was  before  the  Cabinet, 
meeting,  and  for  the  second  time — mind  you,  on 
August  ist — Sir  Edward  Grey  promised  the  Eng- 
lish support  to  France,  and  from  that  meeting, 
having  given  his  promise  for  the  second  time  to 
Paul  Cambon,  he  stepped  up  to  Lichnowsky,  the 
German  Ambassador  and  said:  "I  cannot  formu- 


Why  Germany  is  at  War  95 

late  any  conditions  under  which  we  will  keep 
neutral,  because  we  must  keep  our  hands  free!" 
Then  he  went  to  the  Cabinet  meeting,  and — God 
bless  the  honourable  British  gentlemen  who  were 
still  in  the  Cabinet,  Morley  and  Burns! — and  for 
the  second  time  the  British  Cabinet  voted  against 
the  war!  Not  until  after  the  unfortunate  German 
reply  had  been  received  on  the  next  day,  when 
Germany  knew  no  doubt  that  Sir  Edward  Grey 
had  given  his  promise  to  France  and  that  Eng- 
land would  go  to  war  under  one  pretext  or  another, 
did  the  British  Cabinet  vote  in  favour  of  sup- 
porting France  in  the  war. 

This  is  the  great  irony  of  fate,  that  the  British 
Cabinet  voted  for  a  war  against  Germany  because 
Germany  had  felt  obliged  to  do  what  she  would 
not  have  done  if  she  had  not  known  or  suspected 
that  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  twice  promised  his  sup- 
port to  Paul  Cambon.  I  believe  that  the  British 
Cabinet,  the  majority  of  them,  and  the  British 
people,  were  absolutely  honest.  The  majority  of 
them  believe  to  this  day  that  they  are  fighting 
Germany  because  Germany  broke  a  treaty  with 
Belgium,  a  treaty  which  in  1913  not  even  Sir 
Edward  Grey  claimed  to  be  any  longer  in  force! 

I  agree  most  heartily  with  the  previous  speaker 
who  called  the  hatred  against  the  British 


96  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

people  that  has  sprung  up  in  Germany  most 
regrettable.  I  even  would  urge  all  of  you  who 
still  have  connections  across  the  water  to  endeavour 
to  put  clearly  before  them  the  fact  that  it  was  not 
the  British  Cabinet,  and  not  the  British  people, 
who  really  attacked  Germany,  but  that  it  was  a 
combination  of  circumstances  resulting  from  the 
diplomacy  of  Sir  Edward  Grey. 

Personally  Sir  Edward  Grey  may  be  a  man  of 
honour,  whose  very  word  meant  more  to  foreign 
nations  than  written  contracts.  When  he  gave 
his  word  to  Paul  Cambon,  France  felt  sure  that 
he  would  find  the  means  to  redeem  it.  Sir 
Edward's  word  bound  England  as  securely  as  a 
treaty,  while,  there  not  being  a  treaty,  Sir  Edward 
could  assure  Parliament  time  and  again  that  no 
French  treaty  existed. 

The  English-German  War  came  at  a  most  un- 
fortunate time,  because  latterly  the  Germans  and 
the  British  had  really  begun  to  understand  each 
other  somewhat  after  years  of  mutual  suspicion. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  say  who  first  hurled 
defiance  at  the  other,  but  when  the  previous 
speaker  said  that  he  knew  of  no  instance  when 
England  had  demanded  an  Abrechnung  (account- 
ing) of  Germany,  he  showed  how  woefully  little 
he  knows  of  the  subject.  As  a  sample  of  the 


Why  Germany  is  at  War          97 

Abrechnung  demanded  by  England  I  shall  read 
to  you  a  few  excerpts  from  the  Saturday  Review  of 
September,  1897.  The  writer  complains  that  the 
Germans  are  the  rivals  of  the  English  in  the 
commerce  of  the  world  everywhere,  and  continues : 

A  million  petty  disputes  build  up  the  greatest  cause 
of  war  the  world  has  ever  seen.  If  Germany  were 
extinguished  to-morrow,  the  day  after  to-morrow 
there  is  not  an  Englishman  in  the  world  who  would 
not  be  richer.  Nations  have  fought  for  years  over  a 
city  or  a  right  of  succession.  Must  they  not  fight 
for  two  hundred  million  pounds  of  commerce  ? 

That  is  only  one  of  the  challenges  flung  across 
the  Channel,  and  how  the  speaker  can  say  that 
Great  Britain  had  not  said  such  things,  I  fail  to 
understand,  or  rather  I  should  have  failed  to 
understand,  if  his  entire  address  had  not  been 
composed  of  assertions  none  of  which  he  is  able 
to  back  up  by  facts.  Because  the  pro-ally  papers 
print  an  assertion,  he  believes  it.  And  he  has 
apparently  never  taken  the  pains  of  searching  for 
the  truth  himself.  He  said  that  the  Germans 
had  broken  the  law  of  nations  by  bombarding 
an  unfortified  town  when  they  bombarded  Scar- 
borough. There  are  two  mis-statements  in  this 
assertion.  In  the  first  place,  Germany  has 
claimed,  not  that  Scarborough  was  not  an  un- 

7 


98  Why  Germany  is  at  War 

fortified,  but  not  an  undefended,  town.  I  take  it, 
Sir,  that  you  know  your  French,  and  will  be  able 
to  read  The  Hague  Convention,  in  the  original.  It 
is  there  written  that  "it  is  forbidden  to  bombard 
ports,  towns,  villages,  dwellings,  or  buildings  which 
are  not  being  defended."  The  substitution  of 
unfortified  for  undefended  is  a  trick  of  the  pro- 
English  press. 

So  much  for  the  first  mistake.  The  second  lies  in 
your  assumption  that  Scarborough  was  an  unde- 
fended town,  because  the  press  said  so.  My  word 
may  not  go  very  far  with  you,  but  you  may  be  wil- 
ling to  take  the  word  of  Lothar  de  Bunsen,  cousin  of 
Sir  Maurice  de  Bunsen,  who  had  been  the  British 
Ambassador  in  Vienna.  Shortly  before  the  attack 
on  Scarborough,  Lothar  de  Bunsen  wrote:  "Here 
we  have  continual  scares  of  invasion — much  to 
the  joy  of  Bernard  and  Ronald.  The  whole  coast 
is  an  armed  camp,  and  one  does  not  know  what 
will  happen."  You  didn't  know  that,  Sir.  And 
that  is  the  saddest  part  of  this  whole  affair,  that 
honourable  people,  like  these  two  speakers,  who 
read  only  pro-English  papers, '  have  no  opportunity 


1 A  reference  to  the  report  that  Lord  North cli fife  of  the  London 
Times  had  invested  two  million  dollars  in  American  newspapers 
has  been  omitted  here,  because  Mr.  C.  R.  Miller  of  the  N.  Y. 
Times  has  informed  the  writer  that  the  report  is  not  true. 


Why  Germany  is  at  War  99 

of  getting  the  truth,  and  have  never  yet  thought 
it  worth  their  while  to  insist  that  the  papers  they 
read  print  the  truth. 

The  previous  speaker  has  enlarged  on  the  atroci- 
ties said  to  have  been  committed  by  the  Germans 
in  Belgium.  You  have  all  read  fulsome  accounts 
of  them,  and  probably  know  that  several  months 
ago  the  British  Government  was  forced  by  some 
honourable  men  in  Parliament  to  appoint  a  com- 
mission to  investigate  these  stories  of  atrocities. 
But  what  you  do  not  know,  and  what  the  previous 
speaker  does  not  know,  is  that  this  commission 
has  reported,  and  has  found  it  impossible  to 
substantiate  one  single  charge  of  atrocity  against 
the  Germans.  So  far  as  I  know,  only  two  New 
York  papers  have  commented  on  this  fact.  All 
the  others  have  suppressed  this  report.  (Cf.  New 
York  World  January  28th.) 

Another  report  has  not  been  given  the  promi- 
nence it  deserved,  for  it  came  from  our  own  State 
Department,  and  said  that  an  American  diplomat, 
just  returned  from  the  war-zone,  had  said  that  he 
had  investigated  the  atrocity-stories  and  that 
there  was  not  one  iota  of  truth  in  them.  But,  Sir, 
if  you  believe  those  stories,  I  do  not  wonder  that 
the  Germans  are,  to  you,  those  terrible  people  you 
have  depicted. 


ioo         Why  Germany  is  at  War 

I  came  this  morning  on  the  train  with  one  of 
your  fellow-townsmen  who  has  just  been  honour- 
ably discharged  from  the  cruiser  Chester.  He 
was  in  Vera  Cruz.  In  the  same  car  with  us  was 
a  corporal  from  Niagara  Falls.  I  introduced  those 
two  gentlemen  to  each  other.  Said  the  corporal : 
"That  was  some  mighty  fine  shooting  you  did  in 
Vera  Cruz ;  why,  the  way  you  took  the  steeple  off 
that  beautiful  old  church  was  perfectly  magnifi- 
cent." "Yes,"  said  the  other,  "but  that  was 
nothing  compared  to  the  way  we  fired  our  shells 
right  into  the  Marine  Academy  only  a  foot  over  the 
heads  of  our  own  soldiers.  With  a  few  shots  we 
destroyed  the  whole  building;  the  library  and 
everything  went  at  once."  "And, "  said  the  other, 
"did  you  see  that  Pedro,  or  whatever  his  name 
was?"  Then  I  spoke  up  and  asked,  "Who  was 
Pedro?"  "Oh,  Pedro  was  that  Mexican  cadet, 
who  stuck  to  his  gun  and  kept  on  firing  when 
around  about  him  everything  was  in  ruin,  and 
every  Mexican  was  killed."  What  did  the  Ameri- 
cans do?  Did  they  go  to  that  brave  man  and 
ask  him  to  surrender?  No.  They  shot  him. 
But  in  their  honour  let  it  be  said,  they  gave  him  a 
splendid  funeral,  to  which  all  the  citizens,  men, 
women,  and  children,  turned  out  in  force.  Some- 
how the  courage  and  patriotism  of  this  Mexican 


Why  Germany  is  at  War          101 

lad  and  the  appreciation  of  these  qualities  shown 
by  his  fellow-citizens  have  given  a  rosier  tinge 
to  my  whole  view  of  the  Mexican  people. 

But  here  is  another  instance  of  our  way  of  waging 
war.  When  the  Chester  dropped  anchor  in  Vera 
Cruz  harbour,  there  were  other  ships  there,  one  of 
which  flew  a  Mexican  flag,  while  another  had 
broken  out  the  Union  Jack.  Suddenly  the  British 
captain  signalled  to  the  Chester:  "The  Mexicans 
are  firing  on  you  with  revolvers."  Thereupon 
a  shot  was  fired  into  the  Mexican  ship,  and  a 
boatload  of  jackies  sent  over  to  take  the  men 
prisoners.  Five  men  were  found  on  the  half 
wrecked  ship.  Three  had  revolvers,  the  other 
two  were  unarmed,  although  additional  revolvers 
were  found  in  the  cabin.  All  five,  therefore,  were 
stood  up  and  shot! 

I  do  not  tell  these  stories  to  condemn  our  brave 
soldiers  and  sailors.  They  had  orders  to  take 
Vera  Cruz,  and  it  was  the  duty  of  the  officers  in 
charge  to  take  all  necessary  precautions,  however 
harsh,  to  protect  the  lives  of  their  soldiers.  Some 
things  were  done  in  Vera  Cruz  exactly  like  what 
has  happened  in  Belgium — for  instance  the  break- 
ing in  of  the  doors  of  houses  from  which  shots  had 
been  fired  at  our  soldiers.  If  resistance  was 
offered,  the  occupants  of  the  houses  were  shot. 


IO2         Why  Germany  is  at  War 

But  such  are  the  horrors  of  war.  How  would  we 
feel,  I  wonder,  if  a  man,  who  knew  better,  should 
write  a  book  on  The  Americans  in  Vera  Cruz,  and 
fill  it  with  exaggerated  accounts  of  actual  events 
and  a  liberal  amount  of  falsehoods ;  and  if  thereupon 
the  most  scurrilous  attacks  should  be  made  on  our 
President ;  and  the  honour  of  our  women  and  lead- 
ing men  be  dragged  into  the  gutter,  and  our 
fathers  and  brothers  be  called  barbarians,  and  our 
mothers  and  sisters  be  insulted?  We  too  would 
rise  in  vigorous  protest,  and  it  would  not  matter 
whether  English,  French,  German,  or  Russian 
blood  flowed  in  our  veins! 

But  I  assure  you  that  there  is  no  more  reason  to 
condemn  the  Germans  for  their  warfare  in  Belgium 
than  the  Americans  for  what  they  did  in  Vera 
Cruz,  the  unsubstantiated  assertions  of  Mr. 
Whitridge  or  any  other  pro-ally  notwithstanding. 
And  such  assertions  come  with  especially  poor 
grace  from  those  who  would  defend  England. 
England!  the  country  which  through  the  sixty- 
three  years  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  had  not 
one  single  whole  year  of  peace!  England,  the 
country  that  has  subdued  India,  Egypt,  Africa, 
not  to  speak  of  Ireland  and  parts  of  America,  by  a 
mode  of  warfare  the  cruelty  of  which  can  be 
characterized  only  with  the  one  word  "inhuman." 


Why  Germany  is  at  War         103 

War!  War!  War!  The  previous  speaker  has 
mentioned  Bernhardi.  I  wonder  whether  he  has 
ever  studied  the  writings  of  Major  Stewart  L. 
Murray  of  the  British  Army,  to  one  of  whose  books 
Lord  Roberts  said  in  1905  that  he  was  pleased 
to  write  a  preface  because  it  was  such  a  magnificent 
book?  Let  me  read  you  only  one  passage  from 
this  book,  The  Peace  of  the  Saxons.  Quoting 
from  an  earlier  book  an  account  of  England's 
sudden  attack  on  the  Danish  islands  in  1807, 
Captain  Murray  writes : 

On  July  26th  our  fleet  sailed  from  the  Downs. 
In  the  words  of  the  Danish  declaration,  the  Danish 
Government  saw  the  English  ships  of  war  upon  the 
coast  without  even  a  conjecture  that  they  were 
going  to  be  employed  against  Denmark.  The 
island  of  Zealand  was  surrounded  and  captured,  the 
capital  threatened,  the  Danish  territory  violated 
and  injured  before  the  Court  of  London  had  made 
use  of  a  single  word  to  express  the  hostility  of  its 
feelings.  In  a  time  of  peace  we  surprised  a  friendly 
nation,  landed  an  army,  bombarded  its  capital, 
seized  its  fleet  [and  they  did  not  return  it],  and 
all  its  naval  stores,  which  we  carried  off  to  England. 

This  is  the  quotation,  and  now  Major  Stewart 
Murray,  with  the  approval  of  Lord  Roberts,  goes 
on  to  say: 

I  quote  this  incident  without  comment  to  show 
how  utterly  unconventional,  even  if  necessary  and 


104         Why  Germany  is  at  War 

expedient  our  action  was.  Nothing  has  ever  been 
done  by  any  other  nation  more  utterly  in  defiance 
of  the  conventionalities  of  so-called  international 
law.  We  considered  it  advisable  and  necessary 
and  expedient,  and  we  had  the  power  to  do  it. 
Therefore  we  did  it. 

The  eloquent  gentleman  behind  me  [Mr.  Cou- 
dert]  says,  and  you  will  permit  me  to  repeat  his 
interpolation  so  that  all  may  hear  it:  "Quite 
right  for  that  time,"  but  now  let  me  finish  my 
reading  and  add  what  in  1905  this  major  in  the 
British  Army,  with  the  full  approval  of  Field- 
Marshal  Lord  Roberts,  added: 

"And  are  we  ashamed  of  it?  No,  certainly  not. 
We  are  proud  of  it." 

You  can  search  the  whole  of  the  pestilential  war 
literature  of  Germany  or  of  any  other  country 
except  England,  and  nowhere  will  you  find  any- 
thing approaching  the  defiance  of  all  morality 
which  characterizes  the  writings  of  Major  Stewart 
L.  Murray  or  of  that  other  great  protagonist  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race,  Homer  Lea,  who,  though  by 
birth  an  American,  wrote  for  the  English,  and  met 
the  approval  of  Lord  Roberts,  who  accepted  the 
dedication  of  Lea's  the  Day  of  the  Saxon.  Lea's 
admiration  of  England  was  unbounded,  and  glory- 
ing in  what  other  people  would  wish  to  gloss  over, 
he  wrote: 


Why  Germany  is  at  War         105 

By  wars  and  conquests,  by  theft  and  intrigue, 
by  the  same  brutal  use  of  physical  power,  was  it 
[the  British  Empire]  put  together,  piece  by  piece. 

And  we  all  know  that  this  is  true! 

I  was  asked  to  speak  on  Why  Germany  is  at  war, 
but  if  I  had  not  replied  to  the  attacks  of  the  previ- 
ous speakers  you  might  have  believed  that  no 
defence  was  possible.  There  are  on  this  platform 
three  allies  to  one  Teuton,  but  thanks  to  his 
German  training  this  one  Teuton  was  prepared 
with  the  facts  which  he  would  have  foreborne  to 
use  if  the  Frenchman  and  the  Britisher  had  not 
attacked  him.  You  have  here  a  reflection,  as  it 
were  of  the  real  events  in  Europe,  where  Germany 
is  fighting  against  tremendous  odds;  about  one  to 
six  so  far  as  the  numbers  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
countries  at  war  are  concerned,  and  one  to  more 
than  thirty  if  you  count  the  square  miles  of  the 
world's  surface  on  the  resources  of  which  the  com- 
batants can  draw! 

France  is  fighting  with  that  brilliancy  and  verve 
which  make  one  like  one's  opponent  and  wish  he 
were  one's  friend,  while  England  is  trying  to  forge 
ahead  with  that  ruthlessness  and  assumption  of 
moral  superiority  which  exasperates  her  opponents, 
and  is  meant  to  win  the  favour  of  those  who  from 
a  distance  cannot  see  everything  in  its  true  light. 


io6         Why  Germany  is  at  War 

Germany  has  nothing  but  her  efficiency,  and  a 
firm  belief  that  at  this  particular  juncture  she  has 
not  only  been  wantonly  deceived  and  attacked, 
but  has  also  been  exposed  to  the  world  by  unfair 
diplomatic  means  as  if  she,  and  not  Russia  and 
Sir  Edward  Grey,  had  been  the  author  of  this  war. 

People  most  generally  like  to  believe,  said 
Caesar  of  old,  what  they  wish  to  believe.  And 
none  of  us  can  be  persuaded  against  his  will. 
Instead  of  arguing,  therefore,  that  Germany  is 
at  war  because  she  was  threatened  with  an  attack 
which  endangered  her  very  existence,  I  prefer  to 
call  your  attention  to  a  few  considerations,  which 
seem  to  indicate  that  she  had  least  to  gain  by 
war,  and  that  even  the  most  remarkable  victories 
on  the  battlefield  could  not  secure  for  her  what 
another  generation  of  peace  would  have  dropped 
as  a  ripe  fruit  into  her  lap. 

I.  Germany's  financial  condition  was  excel- 
lent. According  to  the  July  number  of  the 
Journal  of  the  [British]  Royal  Statistical  Society, 
the  per  capita  debt  of  the  United  Kingdom  is  about 
$80,  with  no  assets,  while  the  German  per  capita 
debt  is  about  $76,  with  so  many  assets  in  the  shape 
of  state  railways,  mines,  farms,  forests,  etc.,  that 
the  assets  exceed  the  liabilities  by  far,  and  more 
than  wipe  them  out. 


Why  Germany  is  at  War         107 

2.  Germany's   commerce  was   so    flourishing 
that  it  had  increased  recently  according  to  the 
same   Journal  204   per  cent,   while  the   British 
commerce  had  increased   during  the  same  time 
only   100.7  Per  cent.     When  England  took  two 
steps  in  advance,  Germany  took  three;  and  al- 
ready Germany  stood  where  England  had  been 
only  ten  years  ago. 

3.  Germany's    population    grew    much    more 
rapidly  than  the  English  and  the  French,  which 
latter  was  practically  stationary.     The  German 
excess  of  births  over  deaths  has  averaged  recently 
800,000    annually,    while    her    emigration    had 
practically  stopped.     The  English  emigration  con- 
tinued at  the  rate  of  from  200,000  to  300,000,  with 
practically   no   immigration.     Germany,    on   the 
other  hand,  had,  in  addition  to  her  natural  growth 
of  population,  an  immigration  of  several  hundred 
thousand. 

4.  The  German  industry  was  so  perfectly  de- 
veloped that  it  could  meet  the  demands  which 
were  made  upon  it,  namely  to  feed  each  year  about 
one  million  mouths  more  than  it  had  fed  the  previ- 
ous year. 

5.  The    German   labour   conditions   were   so 
satisfactory,  thanks  to  the  German  welfare  legisla- 
tion, that  poverty  as  it  is  known  in  Liverpool  and 


io8         Why  Germany  is  at  War 

London  did  not  exist  in  Germany,  and  that  there 
were  no  "slums"  in  any  of  the  large  German 
industrial  centres. 

6.  The  German  army  and  navy  were  far  less  of 
a  burden  on  Germany  than  the  English,  French,  or 
even  Russian  armaments  were  on  their  respective 
taxpayers.     The  English  paid  more  than  60  per 
cent,  more  than  the  Germans,  and  the  French 
about  forty  per  cent,  more  annually. 

7.  The  German  Emperor  had  won  the  respect 
and  personal  affection  of  all  classes  of  society, 
even  of  those  parties  who,  like  the  Socialists,  are 
on  principle  opposed  to  any  form  of  government 
except  a  socialistic  democracy. 

He  was  known  to  be  a  man  of  peace  not  only  at 
home,  but  also  abroad,  as  was  shown  by  the  many 
testimonials  from  men  of  prominence  at  his 
twenty-fifth  anniversary  as  German  Emperor. 

8.  The  commercial  relations  of  Germany  with 
all  the  peoples  of  the  world  were  excellent  and 
promised  a  constantly  growing  ratio  of  increase 
in  Germany's  share  in  the  markets  of  the  world. 

9.  Germany's  merchant  marine  was   growing 
by  leaps  and  bounds.     The  largest  ships  afloat  were 
German,  thanks  to  the  wonderful  development 
of  her  steel  and  iron  factories,  the  largest  of  which 
are  the  Krupp  works.     The  gun  factories  of  the 


Why  Germany  is  at  War         109 

Krupps  comprised  only  a  small  part  of  the  total 
establishment,  which  was  largely  given  up  to  in- 
dustrial purposes. 

This  flourishing  German  merchant  marine,  pro- 
tected by  an  efficient  although  comparatively 
small  navy,  was  the  greatest  thorn  in  the  flesh  of 
the  English,  who  called  their  own  navy  a  necessity 
for  themselves,  and  the  German  navy  a  luxury  for 
their  cousins  across  the  Channel.  The  Germans 
were  never  quite  able  to  see  it  in  that  light,  and 
seem  to  have  said  to  the  English: 

Dear  cousins  of  Albion,  you  may  have  no  designs 
on  our  merchant  marine  and  our  commerce,  but 
you  will  forgive  us,  if  we  judge  you  not  only  by 
your  present  protestations  but  also  by  your  record 
as  it  stands  revealed  on  the  pages  of  history. 

And  being  good  students  of  history,  the  Germans 
knew  that  Spain  once  had  a  flourishing  merchant 
marine  and  that  in  the  hour  of  need  her  fleet 
failed  her,  and  the  English  took  her  commerce 
away  from  her.  Later  the  same  thing  happened 
with  Holland,  and  with  France,  and  with  the 
United  States.  In  each  case  there  was  no  suf- 
ficient navy  to  protect  the  country's  commerce, 
and  England  took  possession  of  the  commerce  and 
the  merchant  marine  of  one  country  after  the 
other. 


no         Why  Germany  is  at  War 

Germany  alone  was  left  as  an  English  rival  on 
the  sea;  and  can  you  blame  her  for  wishing  to 
have  a  navy  and  be  on  the  safe  side?  Spain, 
Holland,  France,  and  America,  all  had  been  obliged 
to  yield  their  merchant  marines  and  the  best  part 
of  their  commerce  to  England,  who  had  thus 
made  herself  the  first  nation  on  the  globe  of  the 
world. 

For  several  generations  she  has  held  this  pre- 
dominant position,  but  whichever  way  the  war 
will  go,  she  is  bound  to  lose  it.  Those  were 
prophetic  words  which  the  Chairman  used  in 
introducing  Mr.  Whitridge,  "England  next." 
Yes,  Mr.  Chairman,  "England  next,  and  never 
again  first!  Her  fair  dream  of  world  dominion 
is  shattered  forever.  Her  magnificent  notion 
that  she  is  the  mistress  of  the  sea  and  that  all 
others  sail  the  oceans  only  on  suffrance,  has  played 
her  false.  Her  pleasant  conceit  that  she  can 
oppress  people,  big  or  small,  black,  white,  or  yellow, 
in  any  corner  of  the  globe,  and  can  yet  play  the 
part  of  the  protector  of  the  small  nations,  has  been 
pricked  like  a  bubble.  In  the  past  she  has  main- 
tained her  position  by  fight  and  intrigue.  In  the 
future  she  will  have  to  work  on  equal  terms  with 
all  the  rest.  After  this  war  there  will  be  no  aristoc- 
racy of  nations.  All  will  stand  on  an  equal  footing. 


Why  Germany  is  at  War         in 

Long  after  the  details  of  the  present  war  are 
forgotten,  when  friendship  reigns  again  among  the 
peoples  of  this  world,  and  someone  asks:  What 
did  the  nations  fight  for  in  1914?  The  man  who 
knows  will  reply :  Germany  fought  to  break  down 
the  outworn  order  of  things.  America  and 
France  had  fought  and  suffered,  a  century  and 
more  before,  to  establish  the  right  of  freedom  of 
the  individual,  Germany  fought  to  secure  the 
right  of  freedom  and  natural  growth  of  nations. 
She  suffered  much,  but  she  won  for  the  world 
justice  and  liberty,  and  established  among  the 
nations  what  had  long  been  in  force  among 
individuals — "the  efficiency  test  of  superiority"! 


WHY  JAPAN  IS  IN  THIS  WAR 
By  DR.  TOYOKICHI  IYENAGA 


Photo  by  Kikuchi,  New  York 


WHY  JAPAN  IS  IN  THIS  WAR1 

IN  spite  of  General  Greene's  explanation  I  can- 
not yet  understand  why  I  happen  to  be  the  last 
speaker  this  evening,  at  this  late  hour  when  your 
thoughts  turn  to  the  place  of  refuge  for  rest  and 
quiet  after  these  heated  discussions.  Perhaps 
it  is  because  Japan  entered  the  war  last.  If  so, 
I  will  assure  you,  she  will  not  be  the  last  to  quit 
the  bloody  scene,  but  will  leave  it  at  the  same 
time  and  in  company  with  her  ally. 

At  the  outset  it  is  meet  for  me  to  say  that  the 
Japanese  people,  while  Japan  is  at  war  with  Ger- 
many, harbour  no  feelings  of  enmity  toward  the 
Germans.  On  the  contrary,  they  entertain  the 
highest  admiration  and  warm  friendly  feeling 
toward  the  German  people.  That  this  friendly 
feeling  is  genuine  is  sufficiently  demonstrated  by 
the  courtesy  and  kindness  shown  toward  German 
prisoners  and  German  subjects  residing  in  Japan. 

1  Part  of  this  address  is  reprinted  through  the  courtesy  of 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Company  and  the  Review  of  Reviews 
Company,  who  published  it  in  Europe  at  War. 

"5 


1 1 6  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

The  Japanese  people  have  learned  through  cen- 
turies of  discipline  to  make  a  clear  distinction 
between  personal  friends  and  the  enemies  of  the 
State,  and  have  been  trained  by  the  codes  of 
Bushido  to  be  courteous  and  generous  even  to 
their  foes.  No  better  testimony  of  this  can  be 
given  than  this  most  striking  fact, — that  the 
Chinese  became  more  friendly  to  us  after  the 
China-Japan  War,  and  the  Russians  became  more 
friendly  to  us  after  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  and 
I  will  assure  you  who  are  from  Germany,  not  only 
German  subjects  but  of  German  extraction  and  of 
German  sympathy,  that  the  Germans  will  become 
more  friendly  to  us  after  this  war.  The  bitterness 
shown  among  the  belligerents  of  Europe  toward 
innocent  non-combatants,  which  is  carried  even 
to  the  extreme  of  impairing  personal  friendship, 
strikes  us  as  being  due  to  a  lack  of  catholic  spirit 
and  self-restraint. 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  whatever  condemna- 
tion I  may  see  fit  to  pronounce  later  on  of  German 
methods  refers  solely  to  the  German  Far  Eastern 
policy  engineered  by  German  bureaucracy  and 
militarism. 

To  comprehend  fully  the  real  significance  of 
Japan's  participation  in  the  great  war,  a  firm  and 
comprehensive  grasp  of  the  Far  Eastern  situa- 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  117 

tion  is  necessary.  I  shall  endeavour  to-night  to 
review  the  history  of  the  Far  East  so  far  as  it  di- 
rectly concerns  my  subject,  and  examine  the  spirit 
and  working  of  the  Anglo-Japanese  Alliance,  with 
the  hope  of  making  clear  the  grounds  upon  which 
Japan's  war  with  Germany  rests. 

The  conflicting  policies  pursued  by  Japan  and 
Germany  in  the  Far  East  which  have  at  last  resulted 
in  the  present  war,  had  their  inception  at  the  time 
of  the  China- Japan  War  of  1894-5.  When  Ito  and 
Mutsu  concluded  at  Shimonoseki  the  negotiations 
of  the  Peace  Treaty  with  Li-Hung-Chang,  they 
felt  jubilant  at  the  thought  that  Japan  had  scored 
a  victory  in  diplomacy  no  less  brilliant  than  those 
on  land  and  sea.  The  wily  Chinese  diplomat,  on 
the  other  hand,  must  have  been  laughing  in  his 
sleeve  that  he  had  outwitted  his  rivals,  for,  no 
sooner  had  peace  terms  been  made  known  than 
Ito,  Japan's  Premier  at  that  time,  was  confronted 
by  a  joint  note  addressed  by  Russia,  France,  and 
Germany  to  the  Mikado,  counselling  him  to  re- 
nounce his  claim  to  the  Liaotung  Peninsula. 
This  was  urged  on  the  plea  that  the  retention  of 
the  peninsula  by  Japan  would  be  a  standing  men- 
ace to  the  capital  of  China  and  the  peace  of  the 
Orient.  The  note  was  couched  in  most  polite 
terms,  as  polite  as  the  one  Japan  addressed  to 


n8  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

Germany  on  August  i6th,  but  its  meaning  was 
unmistakable.  The  chagrin  of  Ito  knew  no  bounds ; 
he  remained,  it  is  said,  mute  for  three  long  days. 
How  Ito  felt  is  well  described  by  Sir  Valentine 
Chirol: 

I  was  in  Japan  then  [says  he]  and  in  the  course 
of  a  conversation  with  Prince  Ito,  that  great  states- 
man, usually  so  reticent  and  reserved,  brought  his 
fist  down  on  the  table  and  exclaimed : ' '  Germany  we 
shall  never  forgive!  Russia  looks  upon  us  as  a 
future  rival  in  the  Far  East;  France  is,  of  course, 
her  ally,  and  has  important  possessions  and  ancient 
interests  in  Eastern  Asia — we  can  understand  their 
action.  But  for  Germany,  which  always  professed 
such  genuine  friendship  and  has  no  special  interests 
in  those  regions,  to  join  hands  with  them  and  stab 
us  in  the  back — her  intervention  was  odious  and 
gratuitous." 

It  took  Japan,  however,  not  many  years  to 
discover  the  real  motive  of  Germany  in  joining 
the  European  Coalition.  On  November  I,  1897, 
two  German  missionaries  were  murdered  by  a 
Chinese  mob  in  the  Shantung  Province  of  China. 
This  was  immediately  seized  upon  as  a  pretext,  and 
on  the  I4th  of  the  same  month  German  warships 
entered  the  harbour  of  Kiao-chau,  landed  their 
marines  and  hoisted  the  German  flag  on  the  fort 
of  a  friendly  sovereign  Power.  Then  reparation 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  119 

was  demanded  from  Peking.  And  remarkably 
drastic  were  its  terms,  namely:  200,000  taels  of 
silver  on  account  of  the  dead  men ;  rebuilding  of  a 
chapel  destroyed  in  the  riot;  reimbursement  of 
expenses  incurred  by  Germany  in  occupying 
Kiao-chau;  and  severest  penalties  for  the  assassins 
and  local  officials.  And  on  top  of  these  demands 
Germany  required  Kiao-chau  as  a  naval  base;  to 
be  granted  exclusive  coal-mining  rights  in  Shan- 
tung; also  to  receive  railway  concessions  in  that 
province.  Since  Cain  killed  his  brother  the  world 
has  never  seen  or  heard  of  such  an  extraordinary 
demand  as  this  reparation  for  the  murder  of  two 
holy  apostles  of  the  gospel!  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
Germany  had  for  some  time  past  been  casting  a 
longing  eye  on  the  China  coast  to  find  a  shelter 
for  her  navy  in  order  to  use  it  as  a  strong  weapon 
for  the  prosecution  of  her  Far  Eastern  programme. 
The  murder  of  the  two  German  subjects  by  a 
Chinese  mob  was,  therefore,  the  God-sent  oppor- 
tunity for  the  Kaiser.  And,  because  of  the  debt 
China  felt  she  owed  to  the  German  service  in 
saving  Liaotung  Peninsula,  most  of  the  above 
demands  were  soon  acceded  to. 

In  March,  1898,  the  Kiao-chau  Convention 
was  signed.  By  its  terms  Germany  secured  the 
lease  of  Kiao-chau  for  ninety-nine  years,  and  the 


120  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

right  to  build  forts  and  dockyards  and  construct 
light-houses  and  beacons. 

Within  the  succeeding  decade  and  a  half  Ger- 
many undertook  a  vast  scheme  of  harbour  con- 
struction and  transformed  the  silt-laden  Bay  of 
Kiao-chau  into  a  splendid  naval  base.  She  built 
the  beautiful  city  of  Tsing-tao;  planted  trees  on 
the  barren  hills  surrounding  it ;  established  many 
factories  therein  and  made  it  a  flourishing  port. 
She  fortified  it  by  strong  lines  of  fortifications, 
until  Kiao-chau  became  the  greatest  stronghold 
of  any  Occidental  Power  in  the  Far  East.  She 
developed  the  resources  of  the  Shantung  Province, 
Kiao-chau's  hinterland,  by  building  railroads, 
opening  mines,  and  encouraging  agriculture. 

In  short,  Kiao-chau  was  the  centre  and  base 
of  German  activity  in  China,  politically  and  com- 
mercially. It  was  intended  as  a  beginning  of 
a  vast  imperial-colonial-commercial  programme 
which  Germany  had  formulated  to  carry  out  in 
China. 

To  capture  this  stronghold  of  Germany  in  the 
Far  East,  and  to  destroy  the  warships  that  preyed 
upon  British  merchantmen,  was  then  the  duty  that 
was  imposed  upon  Japan  when  she  was  called  by 
her  ally  to  her  assistance. 

The  operations  on  land  and  sea  which  Japan 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  121 

undertook  are  still  fresh  in  your  memory.  Let  me 
summarize  them  here: 

On  August  1 6th,  Japan  sent  to  Germany  an 
ultimatum  to  evacuate  Kiao-chau  and  withdraw 
her  warships  from  the  Eastern  Seas.  The  time 
limit  having  expired  on  August  23d,  Japan  declared 
war  against  Germany  on  the  same  day.  Four 
days  later  the  Japanese  fleet  completed  the  block- 
ade of  the  harbour  of  Kiao-chau.  On  September 
3d,  Japan  landed  an  army  of  some  20,000  troops 
at  Lungkow  on  the  northern  coast  of  Shantung. 
Unusually  heavy  rains  and  storms  at  first  impeded 
the  progress  of  the  invading  force.  On  September 
25th,  however,  they  took  the  first  advanced  posi- 
tion of  the  Germans  to  the  north  of  Tsing-tao  and 
drove  them  to  the  line  of  main  defence. 

In  the  meantime  another  invading  force  was 
landed  at  Laoshan  Harbour  on  the  south  coast  of 
Shantung.  These  troops,  together  with  a  British 
contingent  under  the  command  of  Brigadier- 
General  Bernardiston,  succeeded  in  joining  hands, 
early  in  October,  with  the  northern  army,  and  thus 
completed  the  cordon  around  Tsing-tao.  Before 
this  the  northern  army  had  seized  the  Shantung 
Railroad,  cutting  off  the  communication  of  Tsing- 
tao  with  the  outside  world,  while  the  Japanese 
fleet  in  co-operation  with  the  British,  had  fre- 


122  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

quently  been  bombarding  its  forts.  From  this 
time  on  slow  but  sure  progress  was  daily  made  by 
the  besieging  forces.  Position  after  position, 
fort  after  fort  was  taken  until  the  successful  storm- 
ing of  the  Bismarck  Fort  on  November  7th  con- 
vinced the  commander  of  the  fortress,  Captain 
Meyer  Waldeck,  that  further  resistance  would  be 
useless,  and  led  him  to  raise  white  flags.  The 
Japanese  troops  made  their  formal  entry  into  the 
captured  city  on  November  i6th. 

During  the  blockade  of  Tsing-tao  Harbour  a  part 
of  the  Japanese  fleet  was  commissioned  to  capture 
or  destroy  the  naval  bases  used  by  German  war- 
ships in  the  South  Seas.  During  this  cruise  the 
Japanese  squadron  occupied  the  Marshall,  Caro- 
line, Mariana,  and  Palao  Islands,  and  placed  special 
guards  therein.  After  the  blockade  of  Kiao-chau 
was  over,  a  part  of  the  Japanese  fleet  was  dis- 
patched to  hunt  out  the  German  Far  Eastern 
squadron,  which  had  been  making  havoc  among 
the  British  trading  vessels,. and  had  defeated  the 
British  squadron  off  Coronel.  Most  of  these 
German  cruisers  have  already  been  sunk,  and  the 
rest  I  am  sure  will  soon  be  caught. 

With  the  fall  of  Tsing-tao  and  the  destruction 
of  German  warships  on  the  Eastern  seas,  the 
first  act  of  the  drama  in  which  Japan  is  taking  a 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  123 

hand  is  ended.  Germany  need  not  feel  over- 
chagrined  at  the  capture  of  Kiao-chau  by  the 
Japanese,  for  the  latter  have  simply  proved  faith- 
ful and  apt  pupils  of  their  former  teachers;  the 
weapons,  military  tactics,  and  training  that  re- 
duced Kiao-chau  were  those  that  were  taught  by 
the  Germans  themselves. 

Turning  now  to  the  relations  between  Great 
Britain  and  Japan,  and  the  spirit  and  scope  of  their 
Treaty  of  Alliance,  we  will  find  the  reason  why 
Japan  entered  into  war  with  Germany.  In  this 
study,  however,  we  have  to  go  back  again  to  the 
past.  When  Japan  was  confronted  in  1895  by  the 
strong  combination  of  three  European  Powers, 
she  found  herself  powerless  to  resist  and  withdrew 
from  the  Asiatic  mainland  with  whatever  grace 
her  self-restraint  could  command.  She  dis- 
covered, however,  that  she  was  not  friendless. 
Great  Britain  had  steadfastly  refused  to  join  the 
European  Coalition,  and  had  expressed  the  strong- 
est disapproval  of  its  action.  But  England  was 
not  yet  prepared  to  actively  support  the  affronted 
nation.  She  was  still  satisfied  with  her  attitude 
of  "splendid  isolation."  There  were  not  lacking 
at  that  time  prophets  who  urged  the  wisdom  of 
joining  hands  with  the  nation  which  had  just 
demonstrated  its  military  prowess.  But  theirs 


124  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

was  the  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness;  it  fell  on 
deaf  ears. 

Meanwhile  momentous  developments  were  tak- 
ing place  in  China.  The  seizure  of  Kiao-chau  by 
Germany  had  inaugurated  an  era  of  European 
aggression  in  the  Manchu  Empire.  Soon  the 
Russian  eagle  was  flying  over  the  fortress  of  Port 
Arthur ;  France  had  lodged  herself  in  Kwang-Cho- 
Wan;  England  in  Wei-hei-Wei.  In  addition,  the 
scramble  for  rail  way,  mining,  and  other  concessions 
from  China,  with  the  Kiao-chau  Convention  as  a 
model,  became  the  order  of  the  day.  Far  more 
ominous  than  these  seizures  of  small  spots  of  land 
and  the  extortion  of  economic  concessions,  was 
the  phrase  "Spheres  of  Influence,"  which  came 
into  vogue.  In  the  north,  Mongolia,  Manchuria, 
and  the  upper  basin  of  the  Hoang-Ho  were  said 
to  belong  to  the  Russian  "Sphere  of  Influence"; 
in  the  centre,  the  vast  and  fertile  regions  of  the 
Yangtze-Kiang  were  ear-marked  as  the  British 
"Sphere  of  Influence";  in  the  south,  the  province 
of  Kwang-si,  a  part  of  Yunnan  and  of  Kwangtung 
with  the  island  of  Hainan,  were  claimed  by  the 
French  as  their  "Sphere  of  Influence";  the  pro- 
vince of  Shantung  had  the  first  honour  of  initiation 
in  the  nomenclature  of  "Spheres  of  Influence"  as 
the  German  "Sphere";  even  Japan  condescended 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  125 

to  mark  her  "Sphere  of  Influence"  in  the  province 
of  Fu-kien  opposite  Formosa.  In  short,  the  dis- 
memberment of  China  among  the  great  Powers 
seemed  to  be  fairly  under  way. 

These  developments  were  watched  by  England 
and  Japan  with  extreme  anxiety.  They  had  com- 
mon grounds  for  fear.  The  maintenance  of  the 
status  quo  in  China  and  equal  opportunities  for 
trade  to  all  nations  were  of  supreme  importance 
to  England,  in  order  to  preserve  the  predominat- 
ing political  and  commercial  influence  she  had 
hitherto  enjoyed.  The  independence  of  China 
was  vital  to  Japan,  for  its  loss  would  mean  the 
setting  up  of  European  kingdoms  at  the  very  door 
of  Japan,  to  the  constant  menace  of  her  national 
welfare,  even  her  existence.  For  these  reasons, 
England  and  Japan  seemed  for  a  time  to  have  de- 
termined to  support  even  single-handed  China's 
integrity  and  the  "open  door." 

It  was  once  declared  in  the  address  of  the  House 
of  Commons  to  the  Throne  "that  it  was  of  vital 
importance  for  the  commerce  and  influence  of 
Great  Britain  that  the  independence  of  China 
should  be  respected."  It  was  announced  through 
the  mouth  of  Sir  Michael  Hicks-Beach,  a  member 
of  the  Cabinet  at  that  time,  that  "the  British 
Government  was  absolutely  determined,  at  any 


126  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

cost,  even  at  the  risk  of  war,  that  the  'open  door' 
in  China  should  not  be  closed."  But  when  Eng- 
land saw  the  audacious  proceedings  of  her  rivals 
in  despoiling  China,  she  became  a  little  suspicious 
of  the  wisdom  of  her  stand,  and  seemed  to  have 
concluded  that  the  position  of  Count  von  Buelow 
might  after  all  be  wiser.  The  German  Chancellor 
had  declared  before  the  Reichstag  to  this  effect : 

Mention  has  been  made  of  the  partition  of  China. 
Such  a  partition  will  not  be  brought  about  by  us 
at  any  rate.  All  we  have  done  is  to  provide  that, 
come  what  may,  we  ourselves  shall  not  go  empty- 
handed.  The  traveller  cannot  decide  when  the 
train  is  to  start,  but  he  can  make  sure  not  to  miss 
it  when  it  starts.  The  devil  takes  the  hindermost. 

The  demarkation  of  the  British  "Sphere  of 
Influence"  in  the  Yangtze  regions,  and  the  acqui- 
sition of  Kowloon  opposite  Hong-Kong,  are  the 
proceedings  that  reflect  the  doubting  mood  of 
Great  Britain.  It  was  the  same  story  with  Japan, 
for  while  she  was  constantly  proclaiming  her  de- 
termination to  maintain  China's  integrity,  she 
took  a  hand  in  the  marking  of  a  "Sphere  of  Influ- 
ence." The  whole  story  shows  the  wavering  atti- 
tude of  England  and  Japan  during  the  years  prior 
to  the  Boxer  outbreak.  On  the  minds  of  the 
English  and  Japanese  statesmen  was  slowly  but 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  127 

steadily  dawning  the  conviction  that,  unless  some 
effective  means  could  be  devised,  it  would  become 
almost  impossible  to  stem  the  tide  of  European 
aggression  in  China.  England  and  Japan,  sepa- 
rately, experienced  the  difficulty  of  holding  even  its 
own  position,  still  more  of  resisting  the  European 
combination.  England  had  tried  the  experiment 
in  the  Anglo-Russian  Agreement  of  1899  and  the 
Anglo-German  Agreement  of  1900.  But  England 
had  already  been  dethroned  in  the  council-board  of 
nations  at  Peking  and  relegated  to  an  inferior 
place.  Whatever  England  proposed  to  the  Chi- 
nese Court  was  almost  sure  to  be  frustrated  by  the 
counter  schemes  of  Russia,  France,  and  Germany. 
And  England's  loss  of  prestige  extended  from 
Peking  to  Teheran. 

As  to  Japan,  her  whole  diplomatic  history,  from 
the  signing  of  the  Treaty  of  Shimonoseki  to  that 
of  the  Anglo- Japanese  Treaty,  is  the  history  of 
humiliation  and  the  acceptance  of  condescension. 
Through  diplomacy  she  was  shorn  of  the  best 
fruits  of  her  victory  over  China;  from  Port  Arthur, 
Wei-hei-Wei,  and  the  Liao-tung  Peninsula  on 
which  she  had  shed  so  ungrudgingly  the  blood  of 
her  sons,  she  was  elbowed  out ;  in  Korea,  for  whose 
independence  and  regeneration  Japan  fought,  she 
found  her  influence  soon  waning,  and  only  "saved 


128  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

her  face"  by  the  compromise  with  Russia  in  con- 
cluding the  Russo-Japanese  Convention  of  1896. 
Not  only  was  she  compelled  to  acquiesce  in  these 
humiliations  and  injustices,  but  she  was  not  able 
to  raise  one  protest  against  those  transactions 
that  snatched  from  China  Port  Arthur,  Kiao-chau, 
and  other  territories,  before  the  very  eyes  of 
Japan,  that  had  scarcely  winked  since  the  battles 
of  Kinchow  and  the  Yalu. 

It  was  in  such  a  situation  that  John  Hay  came 
out  with  his  famous  circular.  Its  first  marked 
effect  was  to  stiffen  the  backbone  of  England  and 
Japan.  The  credit  of  the  great  American  states- 
man lies,  therefore,  not  in  the  origination  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  "open  door,"  but  in  his  giving  a 
strong  impetus  toward  its  preservation. 

The  diplomatic  experiences  of  England  and 
Japan  above  outlined  were  sufficient  to  convince 
the  respective  governments  that  only  a  strong 
combination  could  uphold  their  policy,  and  safe- 
guard their  interests,  in  China.  Herein  are  the 
reasons  and  genesis  of  the  Anglo- Japanese  Alliance 
concluded  in  1902.  The  cardinal  points  of  the 
treaty  were  the  maintenance  of  China's  integrity, 
and  the  "open  door,"  and  the  independence  of 
Korea,  and  the  safeguarding  of  the  special  interests 
in  Eastern  Asia  of  the  contracting  parties.  The 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  129 

Alliance  was  intended  to  preserve  peace  in  the 
Far  East,  or,  if  peace  was  broken,  to  restrict  the 
area  of  possible  hostilities.  It  failed  to  achieve 
the  first  object,  but  it  emphatically  fulfilled  the 
second.  The  treaty  was  renewed  in  1905  and 
again  in  1911. 

There  was  some  opposition  in  1911  to  the  re- 
newal of  the  Alliance  along  certain  sections  of  the 
British  community.  It  was  based  on  these 
grounds: 

1 .  The  Alliance  has  already  served  its  purpose. 
The  Russian  defeat  on  the  Manchurian  fields  has 
dispelled  for  the  time  at  least  the  fear  of  their  en- 
croachment on  China.     The  Anglo-Russian  Agree- 
ment of  1907,  which  settled  the  disputes  on  the 
Anglo-Russian  border,  extending  from  the  Pamir 
to  Teheran,   minimized  the  Russian  menace  to 
British  rule  in  India.     The  Anglo- Japanese  Alli- 
ance has,  therefore,  lost  its  raison  d'etre. 

2.  The  Japanese  Alliance  is  decidedly  unpopu- 
lar among  the  British  colonies  on  the  Pacific, — 
Australia,  New  Zealand,  Canada.     Their  attitude 
toward  Japanese  labourers  is  similar  to  that  of 
the  Americans  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  Consequently, 
the  antagonism  of  the  colonies  to  Japanese  labour- 
ers on  the  one  hand,  and  the  resentment  felt  by 
the  Japanese  people  for  the  humiliation  of  their 


130  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

compatriots  on  the  other,  might  place  the  British 
Government  in  an  extremely  awkward  position 
if  the  Japanese  Alliance  is  continued. 

3.  If  we  remain  allies  of  Japan,  cried  English- 
men, there  is  a  possibility  of  England  finding  her- 
self in  the  most  embarrassing  situation,  in  case 
the  American-Japanese  relation  reaches  a  breaking 
point.  This  fear  was,  however,  set  at  rest  by  the 
new  Arbitration  Treaty  clause  inserted  in  the 
Treaty  of  1911. 

The  opposition  failed  to  shake  the  profound  faith 
of  the  responsible  statesmen  of  Great  Britain  and 
Japan  in  the  wisdom  of  renewing  the  Alliance,  and 
they  put  their  seals  to  the  instrument.  Their 
motives  and  reasons  for  doing  so  must,  therefore, 
be  elucidated  in  order  to  make  plain  the  aim  and 
spirit  of  the  Treaty  now  in  force,  which,  in  turn, 
will  explain  better  than  anything  else  the  present 
Far  Eastern  situation.  Such  an  attempt  is  now 
made  as  briefly  as  possible. 

I.  The  Imperial  policy  of  Great  Britain  and 
Japan  demanded  the  renewal  of  the  Alliance.  The 
late  Marquis  Komura,  who  on  Japan's  side  was 
chiefly  responsible  in  giving  birth  to  the  Alliance, 
presented  the  authoritative  Japanese  view  of  it. 
He  said  before  the  Imperial  Diet,  "the  Anglo- 
Japanese  Alliance  is  the  life  of  Japanese  diplo- 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  131 

macy,  and,  therefore,  everything  must  be  done 
to  avoid  any  step  likely  to  impair  it."  The  same 
has  been  affirmed  most  forcibly  in  word  and  deed 
by  the  present  Foreign  Minister,  Baron  Kato. 
It  was  the  Anglo- Japanese  Alliance  that  gave 
Japan  a  free  hand  to  fight  Russia.  It  was  the 
Alliance  that  prevented  the  intervention  of  Euro- 
pean Powers  after  the  war,  and  saved  Japan  from 
repeating  the  bitter  experience  of  1895.  It  was 
the  Alliance  that  added  prestige  to  Japan  in  the 
council  of  nations.  It  is  the  Alliance  that  ensures 
Japan's  safety  and  safeguards  the  interests  she 
secured  on  the  Asiatic  Continent. 

No  less  great  have  been  the  benefits  Great  Brit- 
ain has  secured  from  the  Alliance.  On  this  point, 
however,  let  Englishmen  themselves  speak  for 
their  own  country.  The  following  quotation  is 
selected  out  of  many  as  its  forecast  is  very  en- 
lightening on  the  present  European  situation. 
A  brilliant  English  journalist,  after  reviewing 
the  reign  of  King  Edward,  and  commenting  on 
the  significance  of  the  Anglo- Japanese  Alliance, 
says: 

In  foreign  affairs  proper,  there  was  not  a  sensitive 
spot  on  the  map  of  which  it  could  be  truly  said  that 
British  policy  was  prosperous  or  our  outlook  en- 
couraging. Our  relations  with  Russia  involved 


132  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

increasing  friction  upon  an  extending  line.  To 
this  was  now  added  the  definite  change,  by  itself 
epoch-making,  in  the  traditional  relations  with 
Germany.  To  that  state  of  things,  if  we  persisted 
in  the  splendid  isolation,  there  could  be  only  one 
end — a  European  coalition  under  German  leader- 
ship, and  to  that  might  have  been  added  a  Russo- 
Japanese  arrangement  at  our  expense  in  Asia. 
These  were  contingencies  so  real,  dangers  so  definite 
and  urgent,  as  to  bring  about  what  was  nothing 
less  than  a  revolution  in  our  foreign  policy.  It  had 
to  be  made  and  it  was  made.  .  .  .  Splendid  isola- 
tion was  ended  by  a  compact.  The  Japanese 
Alliance  was  the  most  remarkable  and  dramatic 
engagement  into  which  our  policy  had  ever  entered. 
The  compact  was  the  solid  foundation-stone  for 
the  new  structure  of  diplomacy  subsequently  raised. 
Having  made  one  Treaty  of  Alliance  we  were  neces- 
sarily open  to  other  negotiations.  In  face  of  Ger- 
many our  sole  desire  was  and  is  to  keep  what  we 
had  held,  but  the  former  co-operation  of  this  Power 
could  no  longer  be  relied  upon.  That  fact,  once 
evident,  was  bound  to  become  and  remain  the  most 
important  consideration  of  our  policy;  the  whole 
perspective  in  which  other  questions  had  been 
viewed  was  changed.  .  .  .  The  evident  disappear- 
ance of  hostility  to  France,  the  new  open-minded- 
ness  with  regard  to  Russia,  gradually  brought  about 
a  corresponding  change  of  thought  and  feeling  in 
each  of  these  countries.  Under  King  Edward's 
auspices  the  entente  cordiale  (with  France)  was 
effected;  the  Anglo-Russian  rapprochement  followed ; 
and — this  country  had  eluded  greater  perils  than 
had  threatened  her  for  many  a  day,  and  had  again 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  133 

secured  a  firmer  diplomatic  position  than  we  had 
held  for  a  century. 

The  Anglo-Japanese  Alliance  has  thus  served 
as  the  first  link  in  the  chain  of  subsequent  under- 
standings among  the  European  allies  now  engaged 
in  the  tremendous  struggle  against  Germany  and 
Austro-Hungary.  The  far-reaching  consideration 
of  England's  Imperial  policy  thus  induced  her 
statesmen  to  conclude  the  third  Anglo- Japanese 
Treaty.  The  interests  England  has  to  safeguard, 
it  needs  no  emphasis,  are  multifold;  these  impose 
upon  her  the  shaping  of  her  Imperial  policy,  not 
by  specific  interests  in  certain  spots,  but  on  the 
terms  of  continents  and  oceans.  And  back  of  all 
lies  the  supreme  importance  of  the  command  of 
the  sea. 

2.  Here  we  come  to  the  second  factor  that  has 
influenced  the  continuance  of  the  Japanese  Alli- 
ance. It  has  enabled  England  to  withdraw  her 
large  Asiatic  fleet  to  the  home  waters,  liberating 
thus  a  strong  naval  force  for  use  in  maintaining 
against  the  pretension  of  Germany  the  supremacy 
of  the  sea.  England  has  in  a  sense  confided  to 
her  ally  the  policing  of  the  Eastern  waters — a 
fact  not  to  be  overlooked  in  considering  Japan's 
quick  decision  to  mobilize  her  fleet  against  the 
activities  of  German  warships  in  Eastern  seas. 


134  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

The  foregoing  survey  of  the  Far  Eastern  history 
and  the  analysis  of  the  aim  and  scope  of  the  Anglo- 
Japanese  Treaty,  will,  I  hope,  make  Japan's  pre- 
sent action  perfectly  clear.  To  summarize,  then, 
the  grounds  of  Japan's  war  with  Germany  are: 

1.  To  fulfil  her  treaty  obligations  to  her  ally. 
Count  Okuma,  Japan's  Premier,  declared  that 

every  sense  of  loyalty  and  honour  oblige  Japan  to 
co-operate  with  Great  Britain  to  clear  from  these 
waters  the  enemies  who,  in  the  past,  the  present, 
and  the  future,  menace  her  interests,  her  trade,  her 
shipping,  and  her  people's  lives. 

Great  Britain,  who  could  hardly  dispense  with 
a  large  fleet  or  expeditionary  force  sufficient  to 
reduce  Kiao-chau,  saw  fit  to  rely  upon  her  ally's 
arms  for  the  undertaking  of  the  difficult  task,  and 
Japan  whole-heartedly  went  to  her  ally's  aid  in 
fulfilment  of  the  obligations  imposed  upon  her  by 
her  Anglo- Japanese  Treaty.  Had  Japan  desisted 
from  taking  such  action  she  would  have  been 
forever  branded  as  a  cowardly,  selfish  nation, 
and  none  would  in  future  have  trusted  or  be- 
friended her. 

2.  To  establish  firmly  China's  integrity  and  the 
principle  of  the  "open  door,"  and  to  ensure  Japan's 
own  safety  and  a  lasting  peace  in  the  Orient. 

Kiao-chau  was  the  child  conceived,  begotten,  and 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  135 

bred  by  the  Kaiser's  "mailed  fist"  policy.  Kiao- 
chau  was  the  last  vestige  of  European  aggression 
on  China  begun  in  1895.  As  long  as  the  German 
stronghold  remained  standing  to  serve  the  purpose 
of  German  Imperialism  and  militarism,  so  long 
the  policy  which  John  Hay  so  lucidly  enunciated 
was  in  danger  of  subversion.  For  who  could  tell 
that,  when  Germany  was  fully  prepared,  the  nu- 
cleus of  German  Imperialism  at  Kiao-chau  would 
not  develop  into  a  factor  whose  power  the  world 
has  not  yet  measured!  Japan  has,  therefore, 
resolved  in  co-operation  with  her  ally  to  root  out 
German  Imperialism  in  the  Far  East,  in  order  to 
place  on  a  safer  and  more  solid  foundation  the 
principle  for  which  England,  America,  and  Japan 
have  so  long  contended,  and  thus  to  secure  a 
lasting  peace  in  the  Orient.  It  goes  without 
saying  that  Japan  will  never  take  any  measure 
that  might  be  construed  as  prejudicial  to  the 
interests  of  the  United  States.  For  America  is 
Japan's  best  friend. 

Japan  has  accomplished  her  first  purpose — that 
is,  has  reduced  Kiao-chau  and  destroyed  the  Ger- 
man warships  in  the  East.  But  the  war  is  far  from 
being  over.  Japan,  'although  doing  at  present 
nothing  but  the  policing  of  the  Eastern  seas,  is 
still  at  war  with  Germany.  That  is  certainly  one 


136  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

of  the  most  unique  and  anomalous  spectacles  ever 
presented  between  warring  nations.  At  this  stage 
it  is  then  absurd  to  talk,  as  some  are  doing,  about 
the  disposition  of  the  captured  Kiao-chau  and  of 
the  German  islands  in  the  South  Seas  which  Japan 
has  occupied.  Who  can  assure  us  that  Japan  will 
not,  before  the  war  is  ended,  be  confronted  by  a 
German  armada  followed  by  the  Kaiser's  picked 
legions,  to  see  whether  Japan's  victory  over  a  few 
thousands  of  the  Tsing-tao  garrison  and  a  couple 
of  gunboats  in  Kiao-chau  Harbour  was  final  or  not? 
Such  a  contingency  is  of  course  remote  indeed, 
but  I  cannot  share  the  easy  optimism  that  seems 
to  rule  among  the  Allies  and  in  the  American  press 
in  general.  What  accomplished  military  feats 
warrant  the  inspiration  of  such  an  optimism? 
Has  not  Germany  conquered  Belgium  and  is  she  not 
in  a  position  even  to  annex  it  if  she  so  wills?  Has 
not  Germany  overrun  Northern  France?  Are  not 
the  German  legions  invading  Russian  Poland  and 
almost  knocking  at  the  gates  of  its  capital?  The 
German  armies  are  fighting  on  their  enemies'  soil, 
and  levying  heavy  fines  upon  the  conquered  cities, 
and  not  a  bit  of  the  Fatherland  has  yet  been 
wrested  from  it  by  its  foes.  Does  this  not  consti- 
tute an  enormous  advantage  for  Germany?  And 
the  German  navy  too  has  already  demonstrated 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  137 

its  efficiency  and  performed  some  remarkable  naval 
feats  which  should  cause  us  to  pause  before  we 
become  too  optimistic.  While  I  have  a  firm  faith 
in  the  ultimate  victory  of  the  Allies,  at  the  same 
time  I  cannot  convince  myself  that  it  will  be  an 
easy  job. 

In  undertaking  the  military  operations  beyond 
the  war  zone  prescribed  by  China,  some  charge 
Japan  with  the  violation  of  China's  neutrality. 
Yes,  Japan  did  violate  the  neutrality  of  China  in 
exactly  the  same  sense  as  England  and  France 
would  violate  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  by  making 
it  the  scene  of  military  operations  in  their  effort 
to  drive  out  the  Germans  from  that  much-har- 
assed country.  Before  Japan  landed  her  troops 
at  Lungkow,  the  Germans  in  Kiao-chau  had  been 
taking  military  measures  in  the  Shantung  Province 
far  beyond  the  zone  within  which  China  asked 
Germany  and  Japan  to  limit  their  operations. 
It  would,  then,  have  been  suicidal  for  Japan  to 
confine  her  military  action  within  the  so-called 
war  zone.  Others  again  impute  to  Japan  the 
violation  of  the  principle  of  China's  territorial 
integrity,  should  she  retain  Kiao-chau  after  the 
war.  I  cannot  agree  with  such  a  construction. 
Of  course  we  cannot  foretell  what  final  agreement 
will  be  made  between  China  and  Japan  about 


138  Why  Japan  is  at  War 

Kiao-chau.  This  much,  however,  is  certain:  if 
the  Allies  finally  win,  Japan  will  have  proper  claims 
to  make  for  the  blood  and  treasure  expended  for 
the  capture  of  Kiao-chau  and  in  running  the  great 
risk  of  having  for  her  foe  a  power  so  formidable 
as  Germany.  Even  should  Japan  decide  to  retain 
Kiao-chau,  it  would  not  be  a  violation  of  China's 
integrity,  for  Kiao-chau  was  not  a  part  of  China ; 
its  complete  sovereignty,  at  least  for  ninety-nine 
years,  rested  in  Germany. 

Before  concluding  I  might  refer  to  the  much- 
talked-of  question  of  sending  Japanese  troops 
to  Europe.  M.  Pichon,  M.  Clemenceau,  and  other 
prominent  Frenchmen  have  been  discussing  the 
subject  and  giving  their  views  to  the  press,  so  that 
the  American  public  and  myself  are  somewhat 
familiar  with  their  points  of  view. 

But  from  the  Japanese  standpoint  I  must  say 
that  it  is  a  question,  as  Baron  Kato,  the  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  says,  "which  should  not  be 
lightly  discussed,  as  it  has  no  direct  bearing  on 
either  Japan's  national  existence  or  the  peace  of 
the  Far  East,  and  it  further  would  seriously  affect 
Japan's  finances." 

It  must  be  first  and  most  clearly  understood 
that  Japanese  soldiers  will  never  act  as  hirelings 
as  the  Hessians  once  did ;  in  other  words,  will  never 


Why  Japan  is  at  War  139 

sacrifice  their  lives  for  money.  This  is  a  foregone 
conclusion.  Furthermore  we  think  it  is  none  of 
our  business  to  interfere  with  European  affairs. 
We  sincerely  hope  that  the  Allies  will  be  able  to 
crush  by  their  own  hands  the  German  militarism. 
But  at  the  same  time  we  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to 
the  contingency  that  in  case  final  victory  perches 
on  our  enemies'  arms,  the  Far  East  is  not  immune 
from  German  invasion.  It  follows,  therefore,  if 
ever  our  soldiers  go  to  Europe  to  fight  against  our 
enemies,  instead  of  folding  their  arms  as  at  pre- 
sent, it  will  be  when  England  appeals  to  us  for 
assistance  and  when  the  peace  of  the  Far  East 
and  our  national  welfare  are  at  stake. 


EPILOGUE 

THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

THE  opinions  of  one  man,  even  though  he  were 
far  wiser,  more  experienced,  and  more  learned  than 
myself,  in  regard  to  our  relations  to  this  epoch- 
making  war — which  since  it  had  to  come  it  is  a 
great  privilege  to  study  from  day  to  day  during 
its  progress,  instead  of  reading  about  it  as  past 
history — are  of  comparatively  small  consequence; 
but  the  views  entertained  by  a  large  majority  of 
the  20,000,000  voters  in  this  broad  land  of  ours, 
if  they  can  be  ascertained,  are  of  enormous  im- 
portance. It  is  my  purpose  to  set  forth  in  the 
following  pages  what  I  believe  to  be  the  views  of 
two- thirds,  or  even  a  larger  portion  of  the  voting 
population  in  this  country,  so  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  ascertain  them  by  diligent  reading  of 
everything  pertinent  to  the  subject  that  I  could 
lay  my  hands  on  during  the  last  eight  months. 

In  the  first  place,  I  think  it  will  not  be  disputed 
that  the  people  of  this  country  are  practically  a 

141 


142  Epilogue 

unit  on  the  proposition  that  we  should  remain 
neutral;  that  we  should  not  become  involved  in 
the  war;  and  that  we  should  not  allow  other  na- 
tions to  involve  us  in  it,  however  much  they  may 
try  to  do  so;  and  in  the  opinion  of  many  people 
some  of  them  have  tried  to  do  so.  The  Presi- 
dent's proclamation  which  was  issued  immediately 
after  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  last  August  was 
received  with  universal  approval,  and  so  far  as  I 
can  observe  there  has  been  no  change  in  public 
opinion  on  that  question.  Some  of  our  most 
distinguished  and  intelligent  citizens  in  Congress, 
in  journalism,  and  in  private  life  have  somewhat 
vehemently  expressed  views  in  regard  to  neutral- 
ity which  are  not  concurred  in  by  any  writers  on 
international  law  either  at  home  or  abroad.  But 
while  there  have  been  differences  as  to  the  manner 
of  observing  neutrality,  there  have  been  no  differ- 
ences of  opinion  as  to  the  desirability  and  neces- 
sity of  our  remaining  neutral,  not  only  in  letter 
but  in  spirit. 

But  in  remaining  neutral  it  has  not  been  possible, 
even  if  it  were  desired,  that  we  should  fail  to  have 
sympathies  and  to  express  them ;  and  I  think  there 
is  almost  unanimous  opinion  upon  the  Belgian 
question.  Whatever  fine-spun  arguments  may 
be  put  forth  by  writers  of  German  origin  or  de- 


Epilogue  143 

scent  in  support  of  the  thesis  that  Belgium  itself 
had  not  remained  neutral;  that  not  only  its  sym- 
pathies were  with  France  and  Great  Britain,  but  it 
had  made  plans  in  advance  of  the  outbreak  of  war  to 
act  in  concert  with  France  (and  with  Great  Britain, 
if  she  should  be  the  ally  of  France),  it  is  probably 
fair  to  say  that  these  hair-splitting  arguments 
have  been  brushed  aside  by  the  broad  common 
sense  of  the  average  man  and  by  the  higher  intel- 
ligence of  the  specialist  in  international  law.  The 
main  fact  stands  out  so  boldly  that  it  cannot  be 
successfully  contradicted,  to  wit:  that  a  nation 
of  seven  millions  of  people,  as  intelligent,  as  in- 
dustrious, as  self-respecting,  as  peaceful  as  any 
other  people  of  equal  numbers  on  the  face  of  the 
globe,  have  been  overrun  by  a  powerful  neighbour 
more  than  ten  times  stronger  than  Belgium  in 
resources  of  every  kind;  and  this  neighbour  has 
laid  waste  one  of  the  fairest  portions  of  the  earth, 
destroying  its  works  of  art  of  great  antiquity  and 
priceless  value,  demanding  unheard-of  indemnities, 
and  treating  its  inhabitants  with  ruthless  brutal- 
ity. In  defence  of  this  course,  which  seems  to  us 
in  America  absolutely  unpardonable,  Germany 
has  no  excuse  to  offer  except  that  this  was  the 
shortest  road  to  France ;  and  that  if  Belgium  would 
not  accept  the  terms  which  were  offered  at  the 


144  Epilogue 

beginning  of  the  war,  viz.,  that  Germany  should 
be  allowed  to  overrun  the  neutral  territory  of 
Belgium  on  Germany's  promise  to  restore  Belgian 
independence  and  Belgian  property  on  the  con- 
clusion of  the  war,  then  Belgium  had  only  itself 
to  blame.  This  excuse  is  put  forward  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  in  1 870  when  the  greatest  German 
of  modern  times,  Bismarck,  was  asked  whether 
in  the  war  with  France  Germany  would  respect 
the  neutrality  of  Belgium,  Bismarck  promptly 
and  unhesitatingly  answered  that  Belgium's 
neutrality  would  be  respected.  The  same  treaty 
which  was  in  force  in  regard  to  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium  in  1870  was  still  in  force  in  August,  1914; 
Germany  had  signed  a  Convention  at  The  Hague 
in  1907  to  which  all  the  belligerent  nations,  except 
Servia,  were  parties,  which  plainly  says,  "Neutral 
territory  is  inviolable";  the  reasons  which  induced 
Bismarck  to  honor  Germany's  treaty  in  1870 
are  just  as  valid  and  unanswerable  now  as  then. 
Character,  honour,  observance  of  the  plighted 
word — all  these  are  as  valuable  in  a  State  as  in 
an  individual;  and  in  violating  their  treaties 
and  crushing  a  gallant  and  deserving  people  who 
had  done  them  no  wrong,  the  German  Kaiser 
and  the  German  people  have  made  an  irretriev- 
able mistake.  They  have  thereby  alienated  the 


Epilogue  145 

sympathies  of  millions  of  Americans,  including 
many  of  German  descent,  who  have  always  ati- 
mired  the  many  splendid  qualities  of  the  German 
race  and  fully  appreciate  what  Germany  has 
contributed  to  art,  to  literature,  to  music,  to 
modern  civilization.  It  was  a  terrible  error;  the 
consequences  of  it  have  been  proportionately 
great  and  the  worst  of  them  have  yet  to  come.  It 
will  be  generations  before  the  atonement  for  this 
ghastly  blunder  will  be  complete. 

While  Germany  by  its  indefensible  course 
against  Belgium  has  alienated  the  sympathies  of 
the  American  people  the  Belgians  and  the  Belgian 
King  have  gained  their  unbounded  admiration. 
They  perhaps  made  a  mistake  in  their  estimate  of 
the  readiness  of  France  and  England  to  come  to 
their  assistance,  but  they  were  under  no  illusions 
as  to  the  power  of  their  mighty  neighbour  on  the 
east.  They  had  no  doubt  as  to  what  their  duty 
was,  or  any  hesitation  in  accepting  their  respon- 
sibilities. They  determined  to  defend  their  inde- 
pendence as  a  nation  at  any  cost ;  and  overmatched 
as  they  were  by  Germany  they  had  no  hesitation 
in  putting  their  lives  and  their  property  to  the 
hazard  in  attempting  to  carry  out  the  obligations 
which  the  treaties  guaranteeing  the  independence 
and  neutrality  of  Belgium  imposed  upon  them  as 


146  Epilogue 

a  nation.  It  is  hard  to  find  in  the  history  of  the 
world  a  more  splendid  page  than  that  which  the 
Belgians  and  their  King  have  written  during 
the  last  eight  months.  Their  homes  have  been  de- 
stroyed, their  non-combatant  population  is  wan- 
dering about  in  search  of  shelter  and  food,  those 
who  have  been  reared  in  comfort  and  luxury  are 
now  suffering  penury  and  want;  but  their  heroic 
spirit  has  never  flinched  for  an  instant.  Their 
King  has  been  one  of  themselves,  with  them  in  the 
trenches,  close  by  them  on  the  firing  line.  His 
conduct  recalls  a  legendary  story  of  Peter  the 
Great  who  on  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Pultowa  is 
said  to  have  addressed  his  troops  in  language 
somewhat  like  the  following:  "BROTHERS:  Know 
that  in  the  battle  of  to-morrow  your  Tsar  fights 
among  you,  and  watches  you,  but  that  the  life  of 
Peter,  like  your  own,  is  as  nothing  compared  with 
the  welfare  of  the  country  which  we  serve  in  com- 
mon." It  is  the  practice  of  Russian  generals  and 
colonels  when  they  meet  their  troops  for  the  first 
time  every  morning  to  say,  "Good  morning, 
Brothers."  It  is  a  pleasing  custom,  whether  it  had 
its  origin  at  the  battle  of  Pultowa  or  dates  still 
further  back  in  Slavic  history.  Now,  in  this 
twentieth  century,  the  ideal  relations  between  a 
king  or  commander  and  the  men  whom  he  com- 


Epilogue  147 

mands,  of  which  this  courteous  salutation  is  the 
symbol,  are  actually  in  existence  between  the 
Belgian  King  and  his  soldiers.  They  are  in  very 
fact  comrades  and  brothers  in  arms. 

The  American  people  have  not  been  slow  to 
respond  to  appeals  in  behalf  of  the  Belgians.  The 
latest  official  report  of  the  commission  for  relief 
in  Belgium,  only  one  of  several  bodies  organized 
for  the  same  purpose,  shows  that  the  sum  of 
$21,500,000  had  been  received  by  the  commission 
and  expended  up  to  February  22,  1915,  for  the 
succour  of  the  destitute  in  Belgium.  This  great 
sum  has  been  contributed  in  a  period  of  business 
depression  and  much  destitution  at  home;  there 
are  other  societies  which  have  received  and  ex- 
pended smaller  but  not  inconsiderable  amounts; 
and  it  is  within  my  personal  knowledge  that  more 
than  one  man,  himself  in  destitute  circumstances, 
and  not  knowing  where  his  next  meal  was  to 
come  from,  has  sought  out  some  Belgian  relief 
committee  and  handed  in  fifty  cents  or  seventy- 
five  cents  or  eighty  cents,  probably  more  than 
half  of  all  his  ready  cash,  with  the  remark:  "Send 
it  to  them  Belgians."  There  are  other  things 
besides  this  great  war  which  are  being  done  on  a 
large  scale  in  this  twentieth  century;  and  so  far 
as  I  know,  there  has  never  been  in  the  previous 


148  Epilogue 

history  of  the  world  a  practical  expression  of 
sympathy  on  so  vast  a  scale  for  the  heroic  virtues 
of  a  foreign  people. 

The  American  people  also  appreciate  at  its  full 
value  the  important  fact  that  the  Belgian  Army 
has  accomplished  greater  results,  in  proportion 
to  its  numbers,  that  any  of  the  other  armies  in 
the  field.  Defeated  and  ultimately  driven  back 
by  overwhelming  numbers  because  France  and 
England  were  not  as  ready  as  Germany,  their  forts 
battered  into  shapeless  ruins  by  the  wonderful 
German  guns,  they  yet  made  such  a  stout  defence 
at  Liege,  Namur,  and  Louvain  that  they  delayed 
the  German  advance  by  seventeen  days  at  the 
opening  of  the  campaign,  at  a  time  when  every- 
day and  every  hour  were  of  almost  inestimable 
importance;  and  in  so  doing  they  deranged  the 
assailants'  plan  of  campaign  and  probably  saved 
Paris  from  capture.  Had  France  been  able  to 
concentrate  her  troops  on  the  Belgian  frontier  as 
quickly  as  Germany  did,  and  to  place  500,000  men 
alongside  the  gallant  Belgians  at  Liege  and  Namur 
before  August  iQth;  and  had  England  been  so 
prepared  that  she  could  place  250,000  men  in  the 
vicinity  of  Brussels  and  Louvain  by  the  same  date, 
there  is  ground  to  believe  that  the  German  Army 
would  have  been  halted  within  forty  miles  of  the 


Epilogue  149 

German  frontier.  We  hear  much  talk  about  the 
futility  of  fortifications  under  modern  conditions, 
but  this  is  a  hasty  and  superficial  deduction.  The 
forts  designed  and  constructed  with  such  care  by 
Brialmont  were  destroyed  in  twenty  days,  we  are 
told.  That  is  true;  but  the  labour  of  destroying 
them  delayed  the  German  advance  for  twenty  all- 
important  days.  But  for  these  forts  there  would 
not  have  been  an  hour's  delay.  The  Army  of 
Belgium,  stout  of  heart  but  insignificant  in  num- 
bers as  compared  with  the  German  hosts,  with  the 
Army  of  France  more  than  one  hundred  miles 
away  and  the  Army  of  England  not  yet  on  the 
Continent,  would  have  been  swept  aside  or  cap- 
tured, and  von  Kluck  would  have  swept  on  to 
Paris,  as  per  plan  so  long  before  prepared  by  the 
General  Staff  in  Berlin.  It  was  Brialmont 's  forts, 
notwithstanding  their  destruction,  that  enabled  the 
Belgians  and  their  intrepid  King  to  make  this 
splendid  defence.  So  great  was  the  disappoint- 
ment of  the  German  Staff  at  the  miscarriage  of 
their  plans  that  it  was  rumoured  and  long  believed 
that  von  Kluck  had  either  committed  suicide  or 
had  been  disgraced  and  dismissed  by  the  Kaiser. 
It  was  Belgium,  single  handed,  without  any  mate- 
rial help  from  France  or  England,  that  caused  this 
delay.  We  in  America  admire  such  a  superb 


150  Epilogue 

military  operation  by  a  comparatively  small  force 
against  the  mightiest  army  on  earth ;  but  we  do  not 
yet  realize  its  full  importance.  When  the  history 
of  the  war  is  hereafter  carefully  studied  we  shall 
have  to  make  a  vigorous  search  through  military 
annals  to  find  a  military  service  equally  heroic  and 
equally  important  in  its  results. 

Early  in  the  history  of  the  war  the  question  was 
raised  whether  we  were  observing  the  spirit  even 
if  we  complied  with  the  letter,  of  our  own  neutral- 
ity laws,  in  case  we  permitted  the  shipment  of 
arms  and  ammunition  and  military  supplies  to 
any  of  the  combatant  nations.  It  was  set  forth 
by  certain  members  of  Congress  and  by  certain 
very  influential  newspapers,  some  of  them  violent 
in  their  German  sympathies  and  some  of  them 
ardent  advocates  of  peace  on  any  terms,  that  if 
we  permitted  the  export  of  arms  and  munitions 
of  war  we  helped  to  prolong  the  contest;  and  on 
the  other  hand,  since  the  fleets  of  Great  Britain 
and  France  control  the  sea,  in  so  doing  we  aided 
the  Allies  and  injured  the  Germans.  It  seemed 
for  a  time  as  if  the  Administration  was  disposed 
to  listen  to  these  views ;  but  they  were  well  advised 
by  experts  in  the  body  of  rules  which  govern 
nations  in  their  relations  with  each  other  and  which 
are  called  International  Law,  that  so  far  from 


Epilogue  151 

violating  our  neutrality  laws  by  allowing  such 
shipments,  we  would  on  the  contrary  be  guilty 
of  a  distinct  violation  of  neutrality  if  we  prevented 
such  shipments.  It  is  a  well-settled  principle  of 
international  law  that  any  change  by  a  neutral 
nation,  after  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  in  its 
neutrality  laws  is  in  itself  a  breach  of  neutrality. 
It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  in  the  war  of  1870 
Carl  Schurz,  then  United  States  Senator  from 
Missouri,  protested  in  the  Senate  against  the 
sales  of  arms  to  France ;  and  his  action  had  impor- 
tant political  consequences  in  this  country.  It 
was  one  of  the  factors  which  led  to  the  formation  of 
the  Liberal  party  in  1872,  the  nomination  by  that 
party  of  Horace  Greeley  for  President,  the  en- 
dorsement of  the  nomination  by  the  Democratic 
party,  the  overwhelming  defeat  of  Greeley  in  the 
election  of  1872,  and  the  death  of  Greeley  soon 
after  the  election.  I  had  the  story  at  consider- 
able length  from  his  standpoint,  and  a  very  inter- 
esting story  it  was,  from  General  Grant  at  St. 
Petersburg  in  August,  1878,  at  the  time  that  he 
was  making  his  tour  around  the  world.  I  re- 
member his  saying  that  while  he  had  great  respect 
for  Carl  Schurz  he  could  not  but  think  that  his 
conduct  in  this  matter  showed  him  to  be  more  of  a 
German  than  an  American,  that  there  was  no  ques- 


152  Epilogue 

tion  in  his  (General  Grant's)  mind  or  in  that  of  the 
members  of  the  Cabinet  who  advised  him  as  to 
what  his  duty  was  as  President,  namely,  to  allow 
the  shipment  of  arms  and  munitions  to  either 
France  or  England,  provided  they  were  paid  for  in 
an  American  port;  we  having  no  responsibility 
for  them  after  they  left  our  shores.  The  enmity 
of  Carl  Schurz  toward  President  Grant  and  his 
Administration  dated  from  this  controversy,  and 
because  the  Administration  did  not  accede  to 
Schurz's  view  Schurz  set  out  to  split  the  Repub- 
lican party  and  to  defeat  General  Grant  for  the 
nomination;  or  if  he  received  the  nomination, 
then  to  organize  from  a  minority  of  the  Republicans 
and  from  the  Democrats  a  party  which  should 
defeat  him  at  the  election.  The  plans  of  Schurz 
and  Sumner  and  Greeley,  as  is  well  known,  came 
to  an  ignominious  failure.  The  only  interest  in 
the  matter  so  far  as  we  are  now  concerned  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  most  brilliant  and  distinguished 
German  who  has  ever  come  to  this  land  took  the 
same  wrong-headed  position,  equally  untenable  in 
international  law  and  in  common  sense,  that  was 
taken  in  the  early  months  of  this  present  war, 
namely,  that  we  should  not  allow  the  sale  of  arms 
and  munitions  to  any  one  or  all  of  the  combatant 
nations.  It  needs  but  a  moment's  consideration 


Epilogue  153 

to  realize  that  it  is  not  our  affair  which  nation 
controls  the  sea;  that  any  one  of  them  is  free  to 
come  to  our  ports  and  there  buy  and  pay  for  such 
arms  and  munitions;  and  that  such  combatant 
nation  or  its  agent  assumes  the  entire  risk  of  safely 
transporting  such  goods  to  their  destination.  If 
they  are  captured  on  the  way,  that  is  their  affair, 
not  ours.  Equally,  if  one  nation  or  a  group  of 
allied  nations  control  the  sea  and  can  procure  the 
safe  delivery  of  such  munitions  in  its  or  their 
ports;  and  if  on  the  other  hand,  another  nation 
owing  to  its  inferiority  in  naval  strength  keeps  its 
battle  fleet  in  its  own  harbours  and  cannot  safely 
convoy  such  munitions  to  its  own  ports,  then 
again,  that  is  their  affair  and  not  ours.  There 
was  some  confusion  in  the  public  mind  on  this 
question  for  some  weeks  or  a  few  months  after  it 
was  raised;  but  this  confusion  seems  now  to  have 
entirely  disappeared,  except  in  the  minds  of  a  few 
whose  sympathies  with  Germany  are  so  violent 
that  they  refuse  to  listen  to  reason.  They  are, 
however,  so  small  a  minority  that  it  does  not  ap- 
pear that  they  will  be  able  to  use  their  resentment 
as  Carl  Schurz  did  for  political  purposes. 

Many  people  thought  early  in  the  war,  and  later, 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  our  Government  to  protest 
under  the  terms  of  The  Hague  Convention  against 


154  Epilogue 

the  violation  of  the  neutrality  treaties  and  the 
disregard  of  the  various  conventions  of  1907  which 
are  intended  to  prevent  the  destruction  of  cathe- 
drals and  other  architectural  monuments  and 
works  of  art,  and  the  other  conventions  which 
were  designed  to  protect  the  unarmed  inhabitants 
of  unfortified  places  from  injury  and  annoyance. 
All  these  things  are  provided  for  in  the  conven- 
tions to  which  all  the  belligerents  except  Servia 
are  contracting  powers.  The  sentiment  in  favour 
of  such  protest  on  our  part  was  at  one  time  quite 
strong;  but  on  mature  reflection  public  opinion 
has  sustained  the  attitude  of  President  Wilson 
that  it  was  unwise  to  make  such  protest;  partly 
because  our  protest  would  have  been  ineffectual 
unless  supported  by  force,  and  partly  because  such 
action  on  our  part  might  have  deprived  our  Gov- 
ernment of  the  opportunity  to  render  very  impor- 
tant service  in  the  bringing  about  of  peace  when 
the  auspicious  moment  to  open  negotiations  for 
that  purpose  should  arrive. 

As  the  war  has  progressed  other  and  more  diffi- 
cult questions  have  arisen,  the  solution  of  which 
is  by  no  means  so  simple  as  the  question  of  the 
right  and  duty  of  a  neutral  nation  to  allow  the 
sale  in  its  own  ports  of  arms  and  munitions  of  war. 
Great  Britain  is  "Mistress  of  the  Seas."  Her 


Epilogue  155 

very  life  depends  upon  maintaining  this  position. 
She  seldom  has  in  the  British  Isles  a  sufficient 
store  of  food  to  last  for  more  than  a  few  weeks. 
Her  food  is  brought  from  Canada,  the  United 
States,  Australia,  and  South  America;  and  if  she 
loses  control  of  the  sea  lanes  from  these  countries 
to  her  own  islands  so  that  she  cannot  protect  the 
safe  arrival  of  ships  travelling  these  lanes  and 
bringing  food  she  would  quickly  be  starved  to 
death.  Great  Britain  has  therefore  for  many 
years  and  through  all  Administrations  held  fast 
to  the  policy  of  maintaining  a  battle  fleet  at  least 
twice  as  strong  as  that  of  any  possible  antagonist. 
To  do  otherwise  is  to  invite  death.  In  addition 
to  this  a  masterful  race  like  the  English,  Scotch, 
and  Irish — and  however  much  divided  in  time  of 
peace  they  act  as  a  unit  in  time  of  war,  many  of 
her  greatest  soldiers  and  sailors  having  come  from 
Ireland — is  disposed  to  go  to  the  limit  in  protect- 
ing every  single  detail  of  her  rights  upon  the  sea. 
It  is  a  curious  fact,  not  generally  recognized,  that 
from  1775  to  1865,  a  period  of  nearly  one  century, 
our  relations  with  Great  Britain  were  almost  al- 
ways strained.  During  eleven  of  these  ninety 
years  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  were 
at  war;  and  during  the  remaining  seventy-nine 
years  the  two  nations,  at  constantly  recurring 


156  Epilogue 

intervals,  were  on  the  verge  of  war,  about  bound- 
ary disputes,  about  fishery  disputes,  and  other 
disputes.  During  all  this  time,  or  at  least  from 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  until  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War,  we  were  rivals  of  Great 
Britain  and  sharp  competitors  with  her  merchants 
for  the  carrying  trade  on  the  ocean.  During  the 
Civil  War  the  Alabama  and  other  cruisers  fitted 
out  in  Great  Britain  swept  our  ships  from  the  sea ; 
we  lost  our  carrying  trade  on  the  ocean  and  for 
various  reasons  which  it  is  not  necessary  here  to 
refer  to  we  have  never  regained  it.  Great  Britain 
gladly  entered  into  the  Treaty  of  1871  under  which 
her  liability  for  the  acts  of  the  Alabama  and  other 
vessels  constructed  in  her  ship  yards  was  to  be 
settled  by  arbitration  at  Geneva;  and  when  the 
arbitrators  decided  that  there  was  a  liability  and 
that  Great  Britain  should  pay  us  $15,000,000  in 
satisfaction  for  the  loss  which  these  vessels  had 
inflicted  upon  our  commerce,  the  amount  was 
paid  promptly  and  without  criticism  or  protest 
from  any  but  an  insignificant  portion  of  her  popu- 
lation. It  was  a  paltry  price  to  pay,  in  comparison 
with  the  indirect  loss  we  had  sustained  in  the 
complete  disappearance  of  our  merchant  marine 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  contingent  advantages 
which  Great  Britain  gained  in  the  event  of  future 


Epilogue  157 

wars,  on  the  other  hand.  The  principles  estab- 
lished by  the  treaty  of  Washington  and  the  Geneva 
arbitration  may  quite  easily  be  of  more  value  to 
Great  Britain,  she  being  mistress  of  the  seas,  than 
to  any  other  nation  in  the  world.  Since  we  had 
lost  our  ocean  carrying-trade  these  principles  were 
of  comparatively  little  importance  to  us,  unless  and 
until  we  should  again  have  a  portion  of  the  ocean 
carrying  trade.  And  this  time  has  not  yet  arrived. 
Now  the  point  to  which  I  wish  to  call  attention 
is  that  so  long  as  we  were  competitors  on  the  ocean 
for  the  carrying  trade  of  the  world,  the  two  nations 
were  always  in  strained  relations  and  frequently 
on  the  verge  of  war.  Since  we  lost  our  car- 
rying trade  on  the  ocean  and  Great  Britain  got 
the  greater  share  of  it,  subject  only  in  recent  years 
to  ever-increasing  rivalry  from  Germany,  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  have  been  very 
warm  friends.  Canada  is  a  good  neighbour,  and 
she  does  a  larger  trade  with  us  than  with  the  mother 
country.  Great  Britain  has  no  objection  to  this, 
and  her  foreign  commerce  which  for  several  years 
has  exceeded  $6,000,000,000  per  annum,  brings 
her  in  an  income  which  leaves  a  net  profit  for 
foreign  investments  every  year  of  more  than 
$1,000,000,000.  We  are  good  friends  because  we 
are  no  longer  rivals  or  competitors.  But  the 


158  Epilogue 

question  is,  if  we  again  become  rivals  or  competi- 
tors in  foreign  commerce,  or  in  any  other  matter 
which  affects  Great  Britain's  vital  interests,  will 
this  friendship  continue?  It  seems  unthinkable 
that  the  century  of  unbroken  peace  between 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  should  ever 
again  give  place  to  hostility  and  war.  But  less 
than  a  year  ago  it  seemed  equally  unthinkable 
that  such  a  conflict  as  is  now  raging  in  Europe 
should  in  this  enlightened  age  break  out.  Mr. 
Choate  has  been  an  important  delegate  at  both 
of  The  Hague  conferences,  and  he  has  recently 
told  me  that  as  late  as  last  July  he  firmly  believed 
that  never  again  would  there  be  a  great  war  in 
Europe ;  but  he  has  lived  to  see  the  greatest  of  all 
wars,  notwithstanding  all  that  was  exchanged 
between  the  various  nations,  and  exchanged  in 
apparently  good  faith,  at  the  two  Hague 
conferences. 

Now,  in  the  progress  of  the  war,  the  time  has 
come  when  in  desperation  Germany  has  announced 
her  intention  to  attack  all  British  vessels  that -she 
can  reach  by  means  of  submarines ;  and  has  warned 
all  neutral  nations  to  keep  away  from  the  danger- 
ous waters  surrounding  the  British  Isles  for  fear 
that  some  one  of  these  neutral  vessels  without  in- 
tention on  the  part  of  Germany  might  be  mistaken 


Epilogue  159 

for  a  British  vessel  and  destroyed.  In  answer  to 
that  Great  Britain  has  decided  to  isolate  Germany 
from  the  world,  to  prevent  supplies  of  any  kind, 
whether  contraband  or  otherwise,  from  reaching 
German  ports;  and  has  warned  neutral  nations 
that  their  ships  destined  for  German  ports  will 
be  seized,  taken  to  a  British  port,  the  cargo  used 
and  paid  for,  or  sold  and  accounted  for,  and  the 
vessels  set  free.  This  action  presents  an  entirely 
novel  problem  in  international  law.  The  decla- 
ration of  Paris  in  the  Treaty  of  1856, which  followed 
the  Crimean  War,  denounced  the  "paper  block- 
ades" such  as  Napoleon  and  Pitt  had  declared  in 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
asserted  that  hereafter  "a  blockade,  in  order  to 
be  binding,  must  be  effective, — that  is  to  say,  it 
must  be  maintained  by  a  force  sufficient  really  to 
prevent  access  to  the  enemy's  coast  line."  The 
principle  was  reaffirmed,  in  the  words  just  quoted 
in  the  Declaration  of  the  London  Conference, 
made  in  February,  1909,  only  six  years  ago.  Such 
a  blockade  was  maintained  by  the  United  States 
during  the  Civil  War  at  all  the  ports  of  the  Con- 
federacy. It  was  an  effective  measure,  it  strangled 
the  Confederacy  and  was  a  very  potent  cause  in 
the  settlement  of  the  conflict  between  the  North 
and  the  South.  But  it  is  not  such  a  blockade  as 


160  Epilogue 

this  that  Great  Britain  has  declared;  in  fact  it  is 
not  called  a  blockade  at  all.  It  is  an  order  to 
neutral  ships  to  cease  doing  business,  and  if  the 
order  is  disobeyed  the  offending  ships  are  to  be 
captured  on  the  high  seas  wherever  found.  It 
seems  to  have  been  designed  from  motives  of 
friendship;  because  the  penalties  are  simply  the 
interruption  of  the  trade,  but  do  not  involve  the 
forfeiture  of  either  vessel  or  cargo,  whereas  a 
vessel,  attempting  to  run  a  blockade,  if  the  block- 
ade is  effectively  maintained,  is  liable  to  forfeiture, 
on  condemnation  in  a  Prize  Court,  as  is  also  its 
cargo.  As  to  the  right,  however,  of  a  combatant 
nation  thus  to  order  neutral  nations  to  cease 
carrying  cargoes,  American  opinion  is  very  sharply 
divided.  At  the  time  I  write  the  attitude  which 
will  be  assumed  by  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  has  not  yet  been  determined.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  that  the  question  presents  very  grave 
possibilities. 

A  question  in  which  the  people  of  the  United 
States  are  vitally  interested  is  the  question  of  the 
duration  of  the  war.  The  outbreak  of  the  war 
disconcerted  our  commercial  relations  with  all  the 
world  and  plunged  us  into  financial  disorder  which 
but  for  the  previous  passage  of  the  Federal  Reserve 
Banking  Law  would  have  produced  a  money  panic 


Epilogue  161 

far  exceeding  in  its  proportions  anything  in  our 
previous  experience.  As  the  war  progressed  we 
have  gradually  accommodated  ourselves  to  the 
changed  circumstances.  While  we  have  been 
unable  to  ship  our  cotton  we  have  received  very 
high  prices  for  our  wheat  and  other  food  products, 
and  this  is  likely  to  continue  until  the  opening  of 
the  Dardanelles  and  the  Bosphorus  releases  the 
stores  of  food  pent  up  in  Russia ;  then  there  will  be 
a  sudden  and  tremendous  drop  in  such  prices. 
In  other  lines  of  industry  we  have  had  great 
profits.  The  combatant  nations  have  purchased 
enormous  numbers  of  automobiles  and  a  constantly 
increasing  amount  of  munitions  of  war,  all  at  good 
prices.  Our  remittances  to  Europe  for  pleasure 
travel  as  well  as  from  the  labouring  population  have 
greatly  decreased;  so  that  we  have  been  accumu- 
lating a  credit  balance  on  an  ever-increasing  scale 
month  by  month  until  now  it  is  estimated  by  com- 
petent financial  authorities  that  our  credit  balance 
for  the  first  year  of  the  war  will  amount  to  and 
possiblye  xceed  $1,000,000,000.  We  are  thus  in  a 
position  either  to  buy  back  at  our  own  price  our 
securities  held  in  Europe,  or  to  extend  credit  by 
taking  pay  for  our  goods  in  short  time  securities 
of  the  belligerent  nations.  The  war  may  therefore 
be  said  to  be  advantageous  to  us,  from  a  business 


1 62  Epilogue 

standpoint.  But  this  is  a  temporary  condition, 
and  the  foreign  trade  out  of  which  we  are  now 
making  a  great  deal  of  money  will  come  to  an 
abrupt  termination  the  moment  hostilities  are 
terminated  and  negotiations  for  peace  are  taken 
up.  Moreover,  the  trade  relations  of  all  the  world, 
our  own  included,  have  been  completely  changed 
by  the  war,  and  in  the  future  they  will  be  very 
different  from  what  they  have  been  in  the  past. 
It  will  take  a  long  time  to  adjust  ourselves  to  these 
new  conditions,  and  the  sooner  we  get  at  it  the 
better.  Obviously  we  cannot  get  at  it  until  the 
war  ends. 

Nearly  every  day  everyone  asks  someone  else 
how  long  the  war  will  last;  and  no  one  is  in  posi- 
tion to  give  a  satisfactory  answer.  Lord  Kitche- 
ner has  said  that  he  thought  the  war  would 
last  three  years.  He  said  this  a  good  many  months 
ago.  He  may  now  have  a  different  opinion.  At 
the  beginning  of  our  Civil  War  most  people  said 
that  the  war  would  last  only  a  few  months;  and 
when  General  Sherman  ventured  the  opinion  that 
it  would  be  a  stubborn  contest  lasting  several 
years  many  people  thought  him  crazy  and  his 
reputation  as  a  soldier  and  as  a  man  of  common 
sense  was  for  a  time  seriously  and  adversely  af- 
fected. It  does  not  seem  that  there  is  at  the 


Epilogue  163 

present  time  any  sufficient  data  upon  which  any- 
one can  with  any  certainty  venture  a  prediction 
as  to  the  duration  of  the  war.  Only  one  thing 
seems  certain,  and  that  is  that  when  the  weather 
becomes  settled  in  April  or  at  latest  in  May,  the 
ground  becomes  dried  and  the  season  for  vigorous 
military  operations  arises,  we  shall  see  such  carnage 
in  Northern  France  as  has  not  been  witnessed  in 
historic  times.  Just  how  it  will  result  no  man 
can  predict.  On  the  defensive  is  the  most  mar- 
vellous military  machine  ever  constructed  and 
organized;  on  the  offensive  there  will  probably  be 
greatly  superior  numbers,  wearing  the  uniforms 
of  nations  which  are  determined  to  see  this  thing 
through  to  a  finish,  and  to  inflict,  if  possible,  upon 
the  nation  which  in  their  judgment  has  brought 
on  this  terrible  catastrophe  such  punishment  that 
not  for  more  than  one  generation  will  that  nation 
again  attempt  to  disturb  the  peace  of  the  world. 
How  it  will  result  one  man  can  judge  as  well  as 
another.  Most  people  in  America  think  that  the 
Allies  are  sure  to  win;  that  superior  numbers, 
backed  by  superior  financial  resources,  must  pre- 
vail as  they  did  in  our  Civil  War.  But,  looked  at 
from  a  technical  standpoint,  soldiers  who  have  given 
most  careful  consideration  to  the  question,  are  dis- 
posed to  think  that  it  is  still  almost  an  equal  con- 


164  Epilogue 

test ;  that  superior  efficiency  on  the  one  hand  will 
counterbalance  superior  numbers  on  the  other.  It 
is  possible  that  Germany  may  be  driven  back  to  the 
Rhine;  but  that  she  can  be  driven  back  from  the 
Rhine  to  Berlin  is  a  hazardous  prediction.  Other 
than  military  conditions  may  bring  about  a  sus- 
pension of  hostilities  and  negotiations  for  peace. 
Germany's  ally  has  proved  a  weak  reed  to  lean 
upon;  the  Austrian  armies  have  gained  no  success 
and  have  suffered  many  defeats  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war;  and  now  the  surrender  of  Przemysl 
seems  an  irreparable  disaster.  Conditions  may 
change  any  moment  as  to  Italy,  but  in  this  latter 
end  of  March  it  seems  as  if  she  was  about  to  throw 
in  her  lot  with  the  Allies.  Certainly,  there  is  no 
longer  an  expectation  that  Italy  will  come  to  the 
aid  of  Germany.  Germany's  ally  on  the  Bospho- 
rus  and  the  Dardanelles  has  also  been  a  disappoint- 
ment; and  at  the  present  writing  it  seems  as  if 
the  Turk  would  be  expelled  from  Europe  and  the 
century-long  dream  of  the  Slavs  that  the  Cross 
should  again  be  placed  over  the  Cathedral  of  St. 
Sophia  in  Constantinople  from  which  it  was  dis- 
placed by  the  Minaret  and  the  Crescent  nearly 
five  centuries  ago,  is  about  to  be  realized.  What- 
ever the  fate  of  Constantinople  may  be  there  is 
no  longer  any  reason  to  anticipate  that  Turkey 


Epilogue  165 

can  render  any  great  assistance  to  Germany. 
Germany  therefore  opens  the  spring  campaign 
in  conflict  with  the  whole  of  Europe,  and  with 
practically  no  ally.  People  in  Berlin  may  well 
be  thinking  whether  it  would  not  now  be  best  to 
restore  the  status  quo  ante  1870,  stop  the  waste 
and  ravage  of  war  which  has  already  exceeded 
all  anticipations  and  fairly  staggers  the  imagina- 
tion, and  begin  while  there  is  yet  time  to  recuper- 
ate before  her  own  land  is  invaded  or  even 
threatened.  There  has  been  no  fighting  on  her  soil 
except  in  a  small  portion  of  East  Prussia.  Sober- 
minded  people  in  various  parts  of  Germany  may 
perhaps  begin  to  think  that  they  can  gain  their 
"place  in  the  sun"  by  peaceful  methods  as  they 
had  been  doing  during  the  ten  years  before  the 
war  broke  out.  On  the  other  hand,  Germany 
may  decide,  as  the  South  did  in  1863,  to  fight  it 
out  to  the  bitter  end,  although  ultimate  success 
was  impossible.  If  Germany  should  make  such  a 
decision,  the  war  will  last  a  long  while,  for  she  still 
has  enormous  resources. 

Finally,  what  is  to  be  the  effect  of  this  war  of 
unprecedented  magnitude  upon  these  United 
States  and  the  hundred  million  people  who  live 
in  them.  As  to  this  I  have  seen  little  expression 
of  opinion  in  the  public  press ;  but  it  seems  possible 


1 66  Epilogue 

and  even  probable  that  the  effect  upon  us,  neutral 
as  we  have  been  and  probably  will  be  to  the  end, 
will  be  no  less  important  and  far-reaching  than 
upon  those  nations  whose  sons  by  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  have  given  up  their  lives  fighting  for 
what  they  believe  to  be  the  right. 

We  are  wasteful  and  extravagant  in  our  national, 
state,  city,  and  county  finances ;  we  introduce  30,000 
bills  every -year  in  Congress  without  any  expecta- 
tion that  one  in  a  hundred  will  receive  serious 
consideration;  we  laugh  at  the  lessons  of  history 
and  say  that  those  things  which  have  happened 
to  other  nations  will  not  happen  to  us ;  in  an  in- 
dustrial and  economical  sense  our  efficiency  is  far 
below  that  of  Germany  and  France;  we  pass  so 
many  laws  in  forty-eight  different  States  and  make 
so  many  decisions  in  their  various  courts  that  no 
man  can  keep  track  of  them  or  know  what  the  law 
is ;  we  harass  the  business  of  the  country  on  which 
its  prosperity  is  based  by  legislation  designed  to 
catch  votes  and  keep  the  legislator  on  his  job; 
we  pay  out  gigantic  sums  in  pensions  not  for  any 
good  military  reason,  or  to  reward  the  deserving 
veteran  who  is  placed  on  the  same  level  as  the 
man  who  served  thirty  days  and  never  saw  a  fight, 
but  for  the  purpose  of  corrupting  the  electorate; 
we  have  allowed  individual  States — Louisiana, 


Epilogue  167 

South  Carolina,  and  California — to  pass  legislation 
in  disregard  of  the  spirit  of  our  treaties  made  in 
pursuance  of  the  Constitution  and  we  acknow- 
ledge ourselves  powerless  to  prevent  it ;  the  first 
instance  of  this  happened  nearly  seventy  years 
ago,  and  the  one  now  pending  is  that  of  California 
in  its  legislation  which  is  intended  to  be  a  studied 
insult  to  the  Japanese  race. 

We  have  grown  rich  beyond  all  precedent  but 
we  have  failed  to  realize  that  this  was  due  to  our 
having  millions  of  acres  of  virgin  soil  of  the  highest 
fertility  which  we  could  afford  to  give  away  to  any 
actual  settler.  This  land  is  now  practically  all 
gone  and  our  industrial  and  economic  methods 
will  have  to  be  completely  changed  if  we  are  to 
compete  with  Germany  and  France  in  manufac- 
tures, with  Russia  in  farm  products,  with  China 
in  minerals,  and  with  Japan  in  commerce. 

From  1783  to  1898  our  orators  said  on  every 
recurring  Fourth  of  July  that  our  government 
was  the  wisest  ever  devised  by  man,  and  that  our 
experiment  in  republican  self-government  was 
the  hope  of  mankind  slowly  emerging  from  the 
tyranny  of  the  past.  We  thought  that  no  one 
would  ever  dare  attack  us  and  that  we  would 
never  think  of  attacking  any  other  nation.  Yet 
in  1898  we  were  the  aggressors,  although  our  cause 


168  Epilogue 

was  just,  in  a  most  insolent  form.  We  were  equally 
aggressive  in  the  Venezuela  matter  in  1894;  and the 
same  members  who  in  Congress  vote  against  any 
appropriations  for  battle-ships  are  the  first  to  intro- 
duce and  advocate  defiant  and  bellicose  resolu- 
tions whenever  a  cloud  appears  upon  the  diplomatic 
horizon. 

In  this  war  we  have  seen  such  efficiency  on  the 
part  of  the  Germans  as  puts  us  to  the  blush;  and 
we  are  beginning  to  learn  what  some  people  have 
long  known,  that  it  is  not  only  in  war  but  in  peace 
that  the  German  is  efficient.  The  German  thinks 
our  form  of  government  is  greatly  inferior  to  his 
own,  and  he  knows  that  our  administration  of 
municipal  affairs,  as  compared  with  his  own,  is  a 
joke — or  a  crime.  In  this  war  we  have  seen 
France  display  a  courage  and  a  calm  determina- 
tion which,  in  view  of  what  we  have  said  for  so 
many  years  about  the  mercurial  temperament  of 
the  French,  about  their  immorality  and  their  dis- 
sipation, must  make  us,  or  those  of  us  who  think 
at  all  seriously,  ashamed  of  ourselves. 

We  have  seen  England  make  a  supreme  effort 
to  defend  her  national  life  and  her  national  honour 
equal  to  that  which  we  made  in  the  Civil  War.  We 
have  seen  Russia  suddenly  adopt  a  drastic  prohi- 
bition law  which  seems  in  a  few  months  to  have 


Epilogue  169 

destroyed  the  drunkenness  which  was  the  curse 
of  the  Russian  moujik  and  which,  according  to 
competent  authorities  and  students  like  Leroy- 
Beaulieu,  formerly  reduced  their  efficiency  by  at 
least  thirty  per  cent. 

During  the  last  eight  months  we  have  seen  the 
world  in  convulsion;  and  whatever  the  result  may 
be  as  to  the  map  of  Europe  and  the  maps  of  other 
continents,  as  to  armament  and  disarmament,  as 
to  indemnities  and  pledges  for  the  future,  these 
seven  hundred  million  people  who  are  now  at  war 
will  enter  upon  the  forthcoming  peace  chastened, 
subdued,  sobered,  filled  with  an  intense  desire  to 
repair  the  waste  of  the  war,  and  willing  to  work 
for  this  purpose  on  what  will  seem  to  us  to  be 
almost  starvation  wages.  We  shall  have  to  enter 
the  competition.  Our  economical  and  industrial 
situation  in  this  twentieth  century  makes  it  im- 
possible for  us  to  keep  out  of  it.  Unless  our 
methods  change  we  shall  soon  drop  behind.  It  is 
a  time  for  us  to  search  out  our  hearts,  to  ask  our- 
selves whether  we  are  capable  of  such  sacrifices 
as  the  nations  of  Europe  are  making  in  behalf  of 
what  each  considers  the  right.  We  showed  that 
we  could  do  this  fifty  years  and  more  ago  in  the 
Civil  War,  but  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  we 
have  the  strength  of  character,  the  moral  fibre, 


1 70  Epilogue 

the  intense  devotion  to  an  ideal  which  our  ances- 
tors of  that  period  possessed.  In  the  coming 
competition  after  peace  is  declared,  every  com- 
petitor will  have  to  stand  on  his  own  feet  without 
prop  or  support  such  as  we  have  had  in  the  past 
from  our  public  lands  and  the  principle  of  protec- 
tion which  derived  its  value  from  them.  It  is  not 
only  the  nations  at  war  whose  future  is  at  stake. 
Ours  is  equally  at  stake.  It  would  be  well  for  us 
to  think  seriously  how  we  shall  fare  in  this  coming 
competition,  and  to  begin  to  make  plans  for 
changing  our  habits  and  discarding  our  wasteful 
methods  and  our  "buncombe"  politics  so  that 
we  may  enter  upon  it  with  some  chance  of  success. 


A  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Complete  Catalogue  sent 
on  application 


Why  Europe  is  at  War 

The   Question  Considered  from  the  Points  of  View  of 

France,  England,  Germany,  Japan,  and 

the  United  States 

By  Frederic  R.  Coudert,  Frederick  W.  Whitridge, 

Edmond  von  Mach,  F.  Ineyaga, 

Francis  Vinton  Greene 

With  Portraits 

The  addresses  presented  in  this  volume  were  delivered 
before  the  Civic  Forum  of  Buffalo  in  February,  1915,  and 
the  interest  expressed  by  the  public  and  the  press  was 
evidence  that  the  utterances  were  deserving  of  preservation 
in  book  form. 

Japan  to  America 

Edited  by 

Professor  Naoichi  Masaoka 

of  Tokio 

A  Symposium  of  Papers  by  Statesmen  and  Other  Leaders 
of  Thought  in  Japan 

72°.    $1.25 

The  book  is  issued  under  the  auspices  of  the  Japan 
Society  and  contains  an  introduction  by  Lindsay  Russell, 
President  of  the  Society.  It  gives  first-hand  information 
as  to  present  conditions  in  Japan,  as  to  the  ideals  and 
policies  of  Japanese  leaders,  and  on  the  all-important 
matter  of  the  state  of  public  opinion  in  Japan  in  regard  to 
the  continuing  interest  of  the  Empire  in  maintaining 
peaceful  relations  with  the  United  States. 

New  York        G.  P.  Putnam's  SODS  London 


France  Herself  Again 

By  Ernest  Dimnet 
$2,50 

The  well-known  historian,  Abbe1  Ernest  Dimnet,  draws 
a  comparison  between  the  demoralized  France  of  1870  and 
the  united  France  of  to-day.  Headings :  The  Deterioration 
of  France ;  Under  the  Second  Empire ;  Under  the  Third 
Republic;  The  Return  of  the  Light;  Immediate  Conse- 
quences of  the  Tangier  Incident;  Intellectual  Preparation 
of  the  New  Spirit;  Evidences  of  the  New  Spirit;  The 
Political  Problems  and  the  Future ;  France  and  the  War 
of  1914. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine 

National  or  International  P 

By  William  I.  Hull,  Ph.D. 

Author  of  "The  Two  Hague  Conferences,"  "The  New 
Peace  Movement,"  etc. 

75  ds. 

The  Doctrine  has  so  widened  its  scope,  so  substantially 
increased  the  rights  and  the  responsibilities  and  the  dan- 
gers, involved  in  its  enforcement,  that  some  remedy  must 
be  devised  to  limit  its  inherent  peril.  The  true,  effective, 
and  equitable  basis  on  which  the  problem  must  be  solved 
is  then  set  forth. 

The  World  Crisis  and  the 
Way  to  Peace 

By  E.  Ellsworth  Shumaker 

Author  of  "  God  and  Man" 
76°.    75  els. 

Earnestly  concerned  over  the  crash  of  civilization,  the 
author  believes  that  America  must  abandon  its  policy  of 
impotent  waiting  and  do  something  to  terminate  hostilities. 

New  York       G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  London 


Germany,    France,    Russia 
and  Islam 

By  Heinrich  von  Treitschke 

A  series  of  essays,  now  translated  for  the  first  time,  by 
the  great  German  historian,  friend  of  Bismarck  and 
teacher  of  William  II  and  Bernhardi.  His  works  have 
shaped  the  present  policy  of  Germany  in  its  attempt  to 
secure  a  dominating  influence  in  Europe  and  throughout 
the  world. 

The  Origins  of  the   War 

By  J.  Holland  Rose,  Litt.D. 

Fellow  of  Christ's  College  and  Reader  in  Modern  History  in  the 
University  of   Cambridge,   Corresponding  Member  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  Author  of  "Develop- 
ment  of   the  European  Nations,"  "  The  Person- 
ality of  Napoleon." 

In  this  volume  the  author  traces  the  course  of  the  politi- 
cal developments  out  of  which  the  present  war  has  arisen, 
the  subject  being  treated  under  the  following  headings : 
"Anglo-German  Rivalry"  (1875-1888),  "The  Kaiser," 
"  Germany's  World-Policy,"  "  Morocco,"  "  The  Bagdad 
Railway,"  "  Alsace-Lorraine,"  "  The  Eastern  Question 
(1908-1913),"  "The  Crisis  of  1914,"  "The  Rupture." 

Can  Germany  Win? 

By  "An  American" 

The  author  of  this  illuminating  work  has  spent  many 
years  in  a  careful  study  of  economic  conditions  hi  Germany 
and  his  findings  bear  the  stamp  of  authority. 

New  York  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  London 


The  Confessions  of 
Frederick  the  Great 

and 
Treitschke's  "Life  of  Frederick" 

Edited,  with  a  Topical  and  Historical   Introduction,  by 

Douglas  Sladen 
72°.    $1.25 

The  coupling  of  these  two  works  in  a  single 
volume  has  a  significance  apart  from  the  fact  that 
they  have  bearing — the  one  as  an  intimate  ex- 
pression, the  other  as  an  able  biographical  sketch 
— upon  one  of  the  great  figures  of  Prussian  and 
world  history.  Treitschke  strongly  influences  the 
philosophy  of  war  and  the  views  regarding  the 
destiny  of  the  German  nation  embodied  in 
Bernhardi's  much  discussed  book,  and  Frederick's 
CONFESSIONS,  in  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Sladen, 
is  the  soil  from  which  the  school  of  Treitschke 
and  Bernhardi  drew  sustenance. 


Treitschke 

72°.    $1.50 

The  Writings  of   Bernhardi's  Teacher, 

Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Together 

with   a   Life,   by  His   Close 

Friend,  Adolf  Hausrath 

The  works  of  this  great  German  historian 
have  shaped  the  present  policy  of  Germany  in 
its  attempt  to  secure  a  dominating  influence  in 
Europe  and  throughout  the  world.  The  follow- 
ing is  a  brief  summary  of  the  subjects  presented 
in  this  distinctive  work  : 

i.  Treitschke's  Life  and  Work,  by  Adolf 
Hausrath.  2.  The  Army.  3.  International  Law. 
4.  German  Colonization.  5.  The  Two  Emperors. 
6.  In  Memory  of  the  Great  War.  7.  Germany 
and  the  Neutral  States.  8.  Austria  and  the 
German  Emperor.  9.  Russia  from  the  German 
Point  of  View.  10.  On  Liberty. 

Treitschke  was  a  close  friend  of  Bismarck,  and 
his  list  of  pupils  include  the  political  and  military 
leaders  of  the  present  generation,  such  as  the 
Emperor  William,  Bernhardi,  and  others. 

Lord  Acton  says  of  Treitschke:  "He  is  the 
one  writer  of  history  who  is  more  brilliant  and 
more  powerful  than  Droysen;  and  he  writes 
with  the  force  and  incisiveness  of  Mommsen, 
but  he  concerns  himself  with  the  problems  of 
the  present  day,  problems  that  are  still  demand- 
ing solution." 


New  York  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  London 


Deutschland  Uber  Alles 

Or  Germany  Speaks 

A  Collection  of  the  Utterances  of  Representative 
Germans — Statesmen,  Military  Leaders,  Scholars,  and 
Poets — in  Defence  of  the  War  Policies  of  the  Fatherland. 

Compiled  and  Analyzed  by 

John  Jay  Chapman 

76°.    75c. 


Alsace  and  Lorraine 

From  Caesar  to  Kaiser.  58  B.C.-i87i  A.D. 

A  sketch  of  the  political  affiliations  of  the  provinces 
before  the  creation  of  the  Reichsland  of  Elsass- 
Lothringen. 

By  Ruth  Putnam 

Author  of  "  A  Mediaeval  Princess,"  "  Charles  the  Bold," 
"  William  the  Silent,"  etc. 

With  Eight  Maps.    5°.    57  35 

Alsace — Romans,  Gauls,  and  Others  on  the  Soil  of 
Alsace — The  Treaties  of  Verdun  and  Other  Pacts  Affect- 
ing Alsace — The  Dream  of  a  Middle  Kingdom — The 
People  of  Alsace  in  the  i$th  Century  and  After — The 
Thirty  Years  of  War  and  the  Peace  of  Westphalia — Louis 
XIV  and  Strasburg — Alsace  after  Annexation  to  France — 
Lorraine  in  Several  Phases  of  its  History — Alsace-Lorraine, 
1871-1914. 

New  York         G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons         London 


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